Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

I enjoyed the Christmas special. Maybe not one of the best episodes but that last speech by Smith was great and the few seconds of the new Doctor we got was manic and exciting and fun as anything!

The quick regeneration was a nice touch! Definitely set it apart from the way too sentimental final episode of the 10th.

would also propose we start a new thread for capaldi era and that the thread title include the phrase 'OH MY GOD HE'S OOGLY'

OTM

/I'm not sure the ratings hold up your spod theory though./

smith has kept people watching imo. if the mega-clever twisty plot bizzo keeps on into capaldi it'll be interesting to see where the ratings go.

So. Because you don't like it, the factual evidence that more people have watched it than ever doesn't matter?

Well now I'm walking back that last post because it is massive overstatement caused by beers. The core sentiment still stands, though.

uh huh

kept ppl watching is wrong there - far far more ppl are watching now than the tennant era.

Clara is a total babe and just otm 100% my type I can't really judge objectively whether or not her story is any good. I enjoy it and it seems to make as much sense as anything in Who universe.

Have to admit I was kind of WTF about the crack in the universe re-appearing but then realized who cares this is how Dr Who rolls.

I don't know why I want to make a distinction between the way Who rolls now and the way it rolled before, but I do. What's funny is that late-Smith Who is probably closer to the classics than anything else in nu-Who.

So basically, my instincts are probably wrong.

http://www.tom-baker.co.uk/assets_cm/files/Image/tom_jazz.jpg

"All this year, in between all this Whooha, I have been nourished by my daily walks in the wood with our dog Poppy and our quirky little Burmese cat called Jazz who loves walks as much as Poppy even when the weather is bad. However, if it rains she leaps from ground level onto my shoulders for a ride so she doesn’t have to get her feet wet and curls around my neck to avoid the mud and puddles. To pass the time on bleak mornings I recite a few favourite passages from Shakespeare! Sometimes Jazz peers into my mouth as I spout speeches from Richard the third."

Clara is a total babe and just otm 100% my type I can't really judge objectively whether or not her story is any good. I enjoy it and it seems to make as much sense as anything in Who universe.

You have the courage I lack to express this very sentiment. I thank you, sir.

Have to admit I was kind of WTF about the crack in the universe re-appearing but then realized who cares this is how Dr Who rolls.

Zactly. It was Moff's version of RTD having Tennant fly past all his companions, but Moff decided to go with his Rogue's Gallery (Angels, crack, Silence, plus throwing in the Cybermen and Daleks because Doctor Who) and sowed them all throughout the episode.

I pretty much loved this btw; it's like the 3rd Doctor's exile to Earth and collaboration with UNIT, only by choice and condensed into one episode and a hell of a lot longer

So there's basically zero indication of what happened in between the Doctor appearing on Trenzalore for the first time and Clara jumping into the time vortex or whatever and the start of the 50th Anniversary episode?

No: the Doctor takes her back home and goes on adventures, she takes her travels with him as fulfilling her wanderlust and translates her skills with children into training as a schoolteacher and getting a London-based proper job.

there do seem to be kind of weird gaps that I wasn't expecting between name day and time but whatever.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/1/27/1390848781372/Peter-Capaldi-as-the-Doct-001.jpg

The Pertwee callback is incredible

badass

the doctor tailor otm

no sonic

Since they now have older dude in the role, do you think they'll tone down the romantic tease between the Doctor and companions? (This was already reduced during Smith's tenure, compared to all the soap opera Tennant went through.) If they keep casting young women as companions, any romance plot is bound to look a bit creepy. I wouldn't mind seeing an older, more self-assured person in the role for change, though... Donna was by far my favourite nu-Who companion, I loved her take-no-shit attitude, as compared to the worshippy relation some of the others have had with the Doctor.

ditko fingers!

haha, otm

I've never watched old Dr. Who, so I was kinda wondering, has it ever been explained why the Doctor changes like he does between regenerations? Is there some reason he goes from old geezer to young dude and back to old geezer again, or is it totally random?

Did I hear that Capaldi was actually the oldest actor to play the Doctor so far, apart possibly from Tom Baker though not sure if that was what he was playing in that cameo. Though Hurt must presumably be a couple of years older surely? & I'm not sure how old Hartnell was, mid 50s?

I had a couple of reservations with the look, hair would be better longer and Dr Marten shoes are a bit clunky. But going back to the semi Edwardian look that seems to have been present with every doctor apart from Eccleston is good. I think Smith was even heading back in that direction in the last series when he got the longer coat.

As to what determines the age of the regeneration, is that down to the whim of whoever is running the production at the time of the change? Speculation was pretty wide on the last couple. He was even speculated to come back black or female. They have been pretty good choices up to now, though not used to their best in some cases. I'd still like to see Andy Serkis as a doctor think he'd be good

As to what determines the age of the regeneration, is that down to the whim of whoever is running the production at the time of the change?

Hartnell was a couple of centuries old, Troughton was 600-odd, Baker/Davison/Baker all gave their age in the 700s. Smith has given his age as expanding from 900-odd to 1200-odd, plus another few centuries in the last episode, but it's also been fairly openly said that he's both lying and can't remember. The Eighth had several centuries of adventures in the BBC line alone, let alone comics and audio.

As for casting decisions, yes they're all made on whim, and not on the skills of the actor involved.

Well yeah, obviously the real-life explanation are the whims of the producers, but what I meant, has there ever been in an in-universe explanation for why the Doctor's age (not the actual age, obviously, but the age he appears to be) and other attributes change between regenerations?

(xpost)

Not really a fan of the DMs either, or the trousers, but the top half is cool.

Probably time for a new thread I'd say.

Pretty sure it's 100% random more or less, as usually even the Doctor himself is in the dark about his new appearance, hence looking in mirrors/acting loopy/"New nose, this'll take getting used to!"/etc.

But Romana was shown to have complete control over her regeneration, trying on different faces in a shopping montage.

(It's generally taken that the Doctor's are so random because a) they're usually under extreme trauma b) he's really shitty at most Time Lord-y things. [He was offered a range of choices when Troughton changed to Pertwee btw - nb "regeneration" still hadn't been invented yet, just that his face could change - but he chucked a tanty at the options and the Time Lords rolled their eyes and said "stfu we'll pick one then"])

New thread when Capaldi's first episode actually airs imo.

In the 50th anniversary episode it's hinted he will eventually learn to control it, as the Tom Baker Doctor says he sometimes likes to revisit old faces... It's never explained, though, why this second Tom Baker incarnation is much older than the previous one; if he just wanted to have a face he'd had before, why didn't he look like Tom Baker when he was the Doctor, instead of Tom Baker in his 70s?

(xpost)

Though TBH most of the things about the Doctor's age make little sense. In "The Impossible Astronaut", the older version of Smith is said to something like 200 years older than the younger one (apparently he spent those 200 years having offscreen adventures), yet it doesn't look like he's aged a day. But in "The Time of the Doctor" he spends 300 years on Trenzalore, and turns from a young mand into an old geezer.

I wouldn't overthink it, most of this stuff has been made up on the trot by many different writers over the course of 50 years.

Because Tom Baker is not currently 40.

BTW: Hartnell and Capaldi both started as The Doctor at age 55; John Hurt was 73 when he played The War Doctor; Baker was 79 when he played The Curator, and Pertwee was 75 the last time he played The Doctor.

One of the faces offered to Troughton looks a lot like the Wet Vet imo, which possibly ties into the later fan theory* about regeneration through trauma picking something familiar hence why the Colin Doctor has the same face as Commander Maxil. This is actually kind of addressed when Romana regenerates, the Tom Doctor has a go at her for picking the face of someone that's still alive.

Actually I think this is where Moffat is going to go with it, should he (as he has alluded) explain the Roman guy and Peter Capaldi.

*Fan theory is kind of an open sore, barely scabbed over, that keeps getting picked at. See Season 6b for details.

ugh, terrible idea to address Roman Capaldi looking like Doctor Capaldi. UNLESS they also bring in him looking exactly like John Frobisher from Children Of Earth and go for a giant third-year reveal that actually FROBISHER has secretly taken over the role of the Doctor and then we switch to the adventures of Matt Smith and a shape-shifting alien penguin. :D :D :D

I am starting to tire of Moffat's need to explain the minutiae of everything.

^^^

^^^^ would watch xpost

(And yes, apparently it will also address Frobisher - COM one, not the penguin - despite The Doctor not seeing him to our knowledge)

lol aldo is down for some hawt Moffat expos action

Frobisher is the best companion ever and every human should be down for some hawt Whifferdill action

Hahaha

Anyway, I thought I would check I hadn't imagined it and found the following:

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-09-30/doctor-who-steven-moffat-has-an-explanation-for-peter-capaldis-earlier-appearances

"We are aware that Peter Capaldi’s played a part in Doctor Who before and we’re not going to ignore the fact," Moffat told Nerd3. "I’ll let you in on this. I remember Russell told me he had a big old plan as to why there were two Peter Capaldis in the Who universe, one in Pompeii and one in Torchwood. When I cast Peter, Russell got in touch to say how pleased he was, I said 'Okay, what was your theory and does it still work?' and he said 'Yes it does, here it is'. So I don’t know if we’ll get to it… we’ll play that one out over time. It’s actually quite neat".

If there's anything worse than an unnecessary Moffat explanation, it's an unnecessary Moffat explanation flagged up in advance as being "really very clever and much smarter than anything you dimwitted nerds on the internet have thought of"

really the big red flag for me here is Rusty involvement

yeah, i was gonna say

Is Capaldi wearing a cardigan under that coat? Bold choice imo.

I interpret that quote ("I don't kmow if we'll get to it...") as Moffat's polite way of saying "thanks but lol no"

as to why there were two Peter Capaldis in the Who universe

it's called ACTING you feeb

would love to have heard a parallel dick wolf interview where he explains their clever theory abt why there are two jerry orbachs running around the law and order universe

is there anything in particular about the aesthetics of sci-fi that would give this kind of silliness any pertinence? role replacements are fairly infrequent in realistic tv styles/genres (it's hard not to think of becky from 'roseanne' as the example), but even when the realism is running pretty high no one thinks to bat an eye when an actor recurs in bit parts or even graduates to a major role. even to the extent of complete defiance—thinking of law and order again, some of the later-season major roles were filled by people who had -very recently- appeared in different, minor roles, at the extreme jeremy sisto playing a lawyer at the end of s17 and playing a detective from the beginning of s18 on. and all those sharp detectives never noticed a thing!

on the face of it if any show should be utterly unflappable about this sort of 'problem' it's doctor who. so is there something about it that makes the producers go for the explaining, e.g. making martha jones adola's cousin, this roman business? the doctor is always noticing identities of people who don't look like themselves, people who look right but aren't yet in the right place and time, people who are disguised, transformed, etc., and obv. he himself has some issues wrt himself there. so maybe who he is in the stories licenses some viewer wondering about that, so it makes sense for the producers/writers to make some concessions?

The Clara explanation WAS actually kind of clever and mostly fell flat because the lead-in stories spent more time thinking the mystery made her interesting rather than her being interesting in and of herself (really, the best parts of Clara's characterization have been the moments where she's like "um this situation totally sucks and I don't think I actually want to do this, but I have no choice so I'd better suck it up and do it" and those moments were supposed to point towards her eventual self-sacrifice but they didn't land hard enough in the context of Wacky Smith Is Wacky Plus They Might Kiss)

Oh thank god.

The same actors turn up in different roles in long-running series like Eastenders and Holby City and whatever all the time. It doesn't need explanation because literally no one other than idiot sci-fi nerds actually cares.