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

ohhh, okay: the bit that was missing from the iPlayer and the totally legitmate version that I watched

Welcome to the TARDIS… ✨ pic.twitter.com/WgpnYiweqR

— Doctor Who (@bbcdoctorwho) January 1, 2021

Yeah, that was what I was highlighting.

so the lady Doctor is so distressed by, m/l, learning she was adopted that she just sits in prison for t w e n t y y e a r s being bummed and reciting Terf Wizard books to herself

until! a fifty-something white man turns up to rescue her and be amazing

(then her "fam" give her shit about not seeing her for ten months and she blubs about it, even though she only knew them for about 1 year of the 21 years this version of her has lived)

then after this ten months of constant pining and trying to crack the secrets of the universe to be reunited with her, the one nonentity bloke and his amazing dad decide to stop hanging around her forever, after one hour of being in her company again.

then we see the amazing fifty-something white man dad concoct a plan to be The Doctor, but on Earth, because all it takes it being a cheery chappy (played by an English TV host unknown around the world)

then instead of deciding to have the first woman Doctor, 57 years into the run of the show, have just one female companion, and perhaps allow this young black woman (who was given hopes and dreams and aspirations in her first episode, but for over 3 years of screen time since, has done nothing but say "the Space Red Cross? Is that like the Red Cross, but in space?") room to have agency and plots and character development, and actual emotional interaction with the Doctor....

... fifty-something white man king of representation Chris Chibnall decides that we have to have a specially-announced trailer that itself specially announces "DON'T WORRY EVERYBODY!!!! we will have a new fifty-something white man companion joining next season (played by an English TV host unknown around the world)

the one nonentity bloke ... decide(s) to stop hanging around her forever

because his mate has got a PS5.

and actual emotional interaction with the Doctor

With a shitload of CLANG hints it's actually sexual interaction she wants, to keep the shippers happy.

also

The one running plotline through last season was that Official Space Cops were acting as mercenaries hired to capture the Doctor.

Then they turned up again but were working as official cops, not mercenaries, and arrested the Doctor and sentenced her to life imprisonment, without a trial or actual charges being laid (?? idrc)

A year later, we pick up on the Doctor in prison having not challenged this sentence, tried to escape, or learnt the charges in order to counter them. We don't even see a glimpse of the Official Space Cops who have behaved in such contradictory, wildly overreaching ways, and instead yoink the Doc out of her twentieth year in priz to drop her into a completely different and wholly unconnected story about... wildly overreaching cops? From space?

With a shitload of CLANG hints it's actually sexual interaction she want

honestly I'm deliberately ignoring this every time, just because I can't believe he's ever going to pay it off in any way :-/

Now you can miss the Doctor killing one of the universe's rarest lifeforms, which we just learnt last episode are wholly descended from her,

lol I totally forgot that every other lifeform from her homeworld also got genocided last episode

maybe because her beloved fam, the amazing iconic trio, didn't give two tenths of a shit when she told them about it today

then after this ten months of constant pining and trying to crack the secrets of the universe to be reunited with her, the one nonentity bloke and his amazing dad decide to stop hanging around her forever, after one hour of being in her company again.

then we see the amazing fifty-something white man dad concoct a plan to be The Doctor, but on Earth, because all it takes it being a cheery chappy (played by an English TV host unknown around the world)

It seems like in your haste to dunk on this wholly middling episode, you forgot to watch it

Ryan was the one urging Yaz to let go of the Doctor at the beginning of the episode and was decidedly unenthusiastic about her return compared to the other two. It was signposted from the beginning that he had rebuilt his life on Earth and that he was the driving force behind the investigation and, when he turned down the trip in the TARDIS, part of his reasoning was because he was the one who wanted to protect Earth. Graham decided to stay because even though he loved traveling with the Doctor, he finally had a relationship with Ryan and he didn’t want to miss out on his life. Transferring all of these decisions to Graham when the show itself explicitly gives them to Ryan is about as fucking stupid as Chibnall’s overall tenure has been.

The prison was loosely thematically connected to the rest of the episode. High tech prison, high tech police. Shame that the prison fell into the "laser walls that are inferior to wall walls" trope.

(Oh god I don't care, but) do we know that the Doctor has been in prison for 19 years, or that Captain Jack has been planning his rescue for 19 years?

It's good that Chibnall has realised that the real purpose for Captain jack is quasi-homophobic gags.

I don’t know what units of time the Doctor was counting off on her cell walls but there were certainly a lot of them

they were in groups of seven, so i figured days / weeks.

(that said she was writing ||||||| and then putting a cross through them rather than using the seventh to strike out six marks like everybody else would)

my general ranking of holiday specials

Time of the Doctor
A Christmas Carol
The Runaway Bride
(all of the middling ones here)
Dr Mysterio
the wardrobe one
Revolution
Resolution
Voyage of the Damned

the Capaldi face-hugger one was top 3 for me, maybe even my favourite

yeah that was tremendous.

my ranking:

Christmas Carol
Last Christmas (facehugger)
Husbands Of River Song
Time Of The Doctor
Twice Upon A Time
The Runaway Bride
The Snowmen
The Return Of Dr Mysterio
The Next Doctor
The Christmas Invasion
The End Of Time
Voyage Of The Damned
Resolution Of The Daleks
Revolution Of The Daleks
The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

Transferring all of these decisions to Graham when the show itself explicitly gives them to Ryan

tbf, by saying that Ryan decided I meant to give the impression that Ryan had decided

will freely admit that I was not paying full attention by the end* but I thought it was Graham who says "hey there's some rock aliums in a quarry in Korea, if you want to do good we could go and investigate aliums like what we've been doing" and Ryan says "well in that case it happens that the Doctor gave me psychic paper for my birthday, I was just going to keep in the wrapping buuuuut"

*middle

I think I was mixing together Last Christmas and Sleep No More, resulting is an average that was middling.

I've found most Chibnall stories just average rather than irredeemably awful over the years but this just felt so uninspired I could not enjoy it at all.

Ellard & Sandifer writeups good as usual.

will freely admit that I was not paying full attention by the end* but I thought it was Graham who says "hey there's some rock aliums in a quarry in Korea, if you want to do good we could go and investigate aliums like what we've been doing" and Ryan says "well in that case it happens that the Doctor gave me psychic paper for my birthday, I was just going to keep in the wrapping buuuuut"

Ryan’s big speech literally is “you can’t defend Earth forever, you’ve inspired me to be here when you can’t be” so Graham is giving him info about stuff he explicitly said he wanted to look into in the previous scene

But yeah, the White guy said it so it’s all his idea

I wonder if this is anyone’s favourite Doctor Who, I genuinely hope it is

The teaser was almost comedically banal. Here is a scene that tells you nothing about the character, that is uninteresting in itself, and has as a big reveal something that is meaningless to most people.

I for one am very excited to see how his ability to unload a van is going to save the universe

You can't say Chibnall's press release doesn't build on that palpable excitement:

“It’s time for the next chapter of Doctor Who, and it starts with a man called Dan. Oh, we’ve had to keep this one secret for a long, long time. Our conversations started with John even before the pandemic hit. The character of Dan was built for him, and it’s a joy to have him aboard the TARDIS.”

Dan

top crossover potential

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwW3ytid4DA

Okay this is feeling like Doctor Who is attacking me

I should rewatch Time of the Doctor perhaps, my memory is that by the end Matt Smith and Moffat had worn out their (considerable) welcomes.

Time Of is brutally cramped, trying to fit an uncomfortably horny Christmas romp, a regeneration and the entire intended plot arc of Smith's fourth season into 60 minutes. But it just about pulls them off, and making Eleven into a sun god who grows old and withers and dies, and then saves his tiny world of worshippers by being reborn as new light, is a much better solstice story than any of the other holiday specials even think about trying.

Plus Handles is cool.

Watching what we have now, I really miss that sort of ambition, even if it didn't always stick.

I would really like to see Jodie with decent material.
Would have also loved a lot more Capaldi without the very wrong companion. Why did he get saddled with carla too thunk it was bad enough that Matt Smith got stuck with her. Really don't like the character beyond being a consciousness trapped in a dalek.

But god the way that things fall in the wrong direction. would have hoped for a lot more from the first female doctor and not getting it.

Unverified potential spoiler link

Argh

The source said she will follow co-stars Bradley Walsh and Tosin Cole out of the door later this year, but ­showrunner Chris Chibnall is to remain.

Lol sorry I put the closing h tag after the closing i tag honest

cool homage to 2018's "Jodie leaving after one season" rumours, and 2019's "CHAOS IN CARDIFF" rumours, from a real source who speaks exactly like normal humans

Some Twitter doctor who nerds think this one might be more legit, but who knows

she probably is leaving, because she will have done three seasons in four years, which has become the standard across the last three Doctors

but anyone with a calendar could write a tabloid gossip piece saying so

Just remembered that the last time Chibs wrote for the show before taking over, he put a fifty-something grandad in those episodes too.

This one got the equal ninth-lowest Audience Appreciation rating of nu-Who:

76: "Love & Monsters" (RTD, these people are plainly wrong)
77: "Orphan 55"
78: "Sleep No More" (Gatiss found-footage Capaldi ep)
78: "Praxeus"
78: "Can You Hear Me?"
79: "The Tsuranga Conundrum"
79: "The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos"
79: "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror"
79: "Revolution of the Daleks"

Ellard & Sandifer writeups good as usual.

Ah, ta - Ellard reliably great on suggesting tiny elements that could have vastly enhanced the intended themes, eg

Because once again the first female Doctor is introduced as passive. For most Doctors, those lines on her cell wall would be a tally of escape attempts…

and finding little things that let down the intent, like

What’s funny is that she’s reading Harry Potter from memory. A story about an adopted kid whose parents abuse him, who’s told he has a destiny but finds that being who you are and making your own choices are what matters.

Did she not notice the parallels?

(Let’s be honest, the nod to Rowling in Shakespeare Code was about grabbing for the biggest thing in kids’ imaginations in 2007. To be doing the same nod 13 years later is more a callback, and an easy reference. It’s not about what kids are into in 2020.)

Not because Rowling is a TERF—that wasn't well enough known in 2019 for me to be bent out of shape about it. Just because the setup of the Doctor talking to herself and telling herself "one of the classics" as a bedtime story in an episode shot not long after August 2019 was so obviously the setup for her to begin, "Through the ruins of a city stalked the ruins of a man..."

Enjoying the discussion and the links from more invested fans as to the current Who quality. Continuity and characterization issues expressed well are great to read, coming from a perspective of seeing potential squandered.

Not that group consensus provides a better product, but it's sad that Chibnall has enough ego not to pass scripts through Whovians for logic, errors, improvements, etc. Not sure how the writing credits would work then, but if proofreading works for books, why not here?

The new Dalek design was very in sync with the Dark Troopers in The Mandalorian. Probably not intentional, just coming from the same Terminator-uninspired cul-de-sac. Not as bad as then giving them what felt like only five minutes of action and dialogue.

60th Anniversary team-up of the 9th and 13th Doctors preview

it's sad that Chibnall has enough ego not to pass scripts through Whovians for logic, errors, improvements, etc. Not sure how the writing credits would work then, but if proofreading works for books, why not here?

He already has episode script supervisors, a series producer, a production executive and an equal-with-him executive producer to give feedback

(though they dropped the Series Script Editor role after S11. which might be noteworthy by comparison with Moffat shouting out one script editor ).

accidentally posted mid-type:

He already has episode script supervisors, a series producer, a production executive and an equal-with-him executive producer to give feedback. Adding rando nerds to give their opinions is unlikely to have a salutary impact.

(though they dropped the Series Script Editor role after S11. which might be noteworthy by comparison with Moffat shouting out one script editor's improvements on twitter the other week, and having appointed another one as his equal-level exec prod for the last four seasons of his run).

Thanks for clarifying. The example I've been thinking of was the Russo brothers gathering input on any flaws in the second Captain America's script and how it resulted in a stronger movie. Chibnall's writing could benefit, based on the excerpts itt.

Curious as to whether abolishing the script editor role has any correlation with three out of six non-Chibnall scripts in S12 acquiring Chibnall co-write credits within days of TX.

(RTD did drafts, and sometimes shooting scripts, on every freelancer except Moffat, but didn't take co-credit until the final year of Tennant specials needed his name to sell as a standalone package. Moffatt also rewrote everyone, though to a lesser extent, and took a few co-credits in the Capaldi era after Smith's S7B had been a time-crunched production disaster that he'd not had time to rewrite on. (He framed his one late-added co- credit in S10 as being because the ep turned out so badly that he didn't want ppl to blame the original writer, who'd been given a brief in the first place.))

1987 followup to teenage Chibnall criticising Who writers Pip & Jane Baker to their faces on Open Air in 1986:

Chris Chibnall reviews Time and the Rani Part 1 😳 pic.twitter.com/zYH96F5V6o

— Joey Morgan (@JoMo___) January 11, 2021

Revolution came in as the tenth most-watched programme of the week, after the New Years live special, A Perfect Planet, The Masked Singer, two episodes of BBC News and four eps of Corrie.

i swear there used to be a post here where sic logistically dismantled chibz' squandering of doctor who's precious christmas day time slot but now i don't see it??

ah found it:

Rolling UK Comedy Thread - "Ricky Don't Lose Larry David's Number