WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

It's a diss, sadly

My kids are still in disbelief that there are no new Doctor Whos for another year, so we've been spending sunday nights dipping into the other seasons. Funny how it feels like there's about a bazillion doctors for them to discover, even just from the Nu-era. Just finished the Silence in the Library 2-parter and I had forgotten just how fucking amazing River Song is. The kids were scared shitless - less of the Vashta Nerada and more with Donna's face being stuck on a plinth.

That's my favorite Davies-era episode.

I suspect a huge proportion of Big Finish subscribers buy everything and never listen to 95% of it.

― steven, soda jerk (sic)

one of the more frustrating parts of being a who fan is the vast amounts of deuterocanonical crap it generates. particularly so because i grew up in an age where doctor who _was_ the deuterocanonical stuff, some of which was amusingly dodge (take a bow, bill baggs) but a large portion of which was people not just sustaining but rebuilding the show into what it would become in 2005.

nowadays, though, it seems like a lot of the offline fanbase are people who define themselves by the merch, regardless of the quality. that's disappointing to me because i do want to actually talk about the show sometimes, and online discourse is, in general, poisoned beyond the point of usefulness

oh, i should probably read tom baker's book though, that sounds like it might be interesting

i guess i should ask here - is scratchman (do not make pun, do not make pun, do not make pun) any good?

General consensus seems to be “much better than 85-year-old Tom Baker ‘writing’ a novelisation of an unfilmable screenplay of some ideas that he and a mate came up with in the pub 40 years ago has any right to be.” I haven’t put the audiobook onto a listening device yet.

^would buy if this were the jacket blurb.

Entertaining episode of 'David Tennant Does a Podcast' where he and Jodie Whittaker chat for 45 minutes about being the Doctor and how it affects your real life, etc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLu06tlLIyk

Going back to Whitaker’s first season, I don’t actively dislike anything from it aside from the resolution to Kerblam! but I don’t know if you could pay me to watch any of it again aside from It Takes You Away and the two historicals. I may reluctantly have to change my position and agree it is the worst season of nu-Who so far (although I do actively dislike Tennant’s first season more, mostly because his Doctor becomes deeply, intensely unpleasant to watch as his relationship with Rose deepens. Thank god for Martha and Donna, really.

^

Actually the spider one was pretty good, all things considered

^ stockholm syndrome

i never actually finished watching the season because whenever i watched an episode i kept wanting to talk about how much i loved it and then i'd go on here and everybody would be complaining ad nauseam about how awful it was. i'll probably get around to watching the rest sometime.

everybody here constantly bitching and whining about everything in bullet list format made me decide this is in fact the greatest season of Doctor Who that has ever been broadcast on any medium or continent

tombot otm

and the two historicals

I'm guessing this is Rosa and Demons of the Punjab - The Witchfinder has.. different charms.

i guess i should ask here - is scratchman (do not make pun, do not make pun, do not make pun) any good?

― the scientology of mountains (rushomancy), Sunday, February 17, 2019 2:55 AM (four months ago)

General consensus seems to be “much better than 85-year-old Tom Baker ‘writing’ a novelisation of an unfilmable screenplay of some ideas that he and a mate came up with in the pub 40 years ago has any right to be.” I haven’t put the audiobook onto a listening device yet.

I'm ten minutes in now and it's fantastic. Whether Tom actually wrote any of the sentences or not, it absolutely feels like a geriatric version of his Doctor telling you a possibly-slightly-confused version of something that may have happened to him once. While relentlessly negging Harry Sullivan.

if Tom reads the audiobook version himself, I kinda have to get this

It's him, but he doesn't even sound like he's reading, just remembering.

oh i forgot this existed! i should check this out

i've been watching the macra terror animation, i love it, the story is such a cheap low-budget piece of shit, so much brainless fun

The low-budget nature of the story finally fits the very low budget of the animation. Poor Power and Shada for being test runs.

The way I figure it is that if there'd demand they can always redo Shada. Technically speaking you could probably animate The Macra Terror and The Faceless Ones in a way that would make them look good, but why would you? Even as cheap as it is it's miles beyond anything the fans have come up with. I'm pretty happy.

if this is new pr framing, perhaps they’re being ultra defensive because of the whole ~~~lady~~~ thing

"Jodie Whitaker is Doctor Who, that's all kids need to care about"

100% agree

― Everything to do with chocolate (Autumn Almanac), Wednesday, August 1, 2018 12:20 PM (one year ago)

Me too!

― El Tomboto, Wednesday, August 1, 2018 1:04 PM (one year ago)

you love to see it

Sitting down with family to watch @4SylvesterMcCoy & @sophie_aldred #DoctorWho #DoctorWhoonBritBox and the first question I got was, which one is the doctor ? Such a wonderful question to hear ! (tbf Dr Who has always championed #GirlPower with the companions, but nonetheless👍) pic.twitter.com/0pT6YQUDQU

— Ashley Stebbings🎄🎅🎁⛄🤶🛷 (@ashleyst78) December 27, 2019

Wish I was more excited for the new series, but the fact the opening story has the Doctor going to work for noted shitmeisters MI6 is not promising. Probably will features more scenes of the Doctor fawning over the military-industrial complex.

A venerable tradition, Pertwee hanging out with squaddies all the time my favourite era of og doctor who

Sure, but he wasn't a fan of them!

Sure, but he wasn't a fan of them!

― Tsar Bombadil (James Morrison)

except when he was

sure, he got in a right proper snit when the brigadier committed genocide, but he got over it fairly easily all things considered

Blerg. Bailed after 20 mins. Might have to skip this season.

This was fine.

It’s just so... witless and straight-edge

Witless is right. How does he keep writing dialogue where people describe what's happening in front of them over and over, while never having any of the concepts and premises in the show connect to each other or follow through on themselves?

Shilling for Amazon (repeatedly) and Uber suggests a possibility that the pro-exploitation ending of Kerblam was rewritten by Chibnall after all.

The Doctor still figuring everything out by googling halfway through the episode and reading the results aloud.

(also how the fuck is this guy in South Africa the Outback supposed to have NBN?)

(^ ok so this gets explained but why didn't it surprise a) the secret service cops and b) the Doctor who knows the place so well she once lived there for 123 years?)

So many of the lines are such dull boilerplate that all but the youngest viewers could finish them before the actors, but they're played as dazzling revelations.

"One last thing, something you should know in the second before you die: everything you think you know.....

...

....

...

...IS A LIE!"

"I thought I was dead."
"No. I'm never going to let that happen to you."
good luck w/ that mate

Also tapping out vs hate watching. Enjoyment affected by the mouth breathing cast, and dialogue, action and tone akin to little Ani pod racing. On the plus side, happy for the viewers establishing this as *their* Doctor, not sharing my annoyances.

why does every scene have to be played as THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT EVER? it is tiring and makes every scene feel the same.

did they all forget that they had a TIME AND SPACE MACHINE in this episode?

(also how the fuck is this guy in South Africa the Outback supposed to have NBN?)

science fiction

Spyfall was fantastic but I do think Chris Chibnall slightly overdid it with all those captions #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/qOhEWMMGjr

— Happy New Pip (@pipmadeley) January 1, 2020

Yeah, all the reference jokes in this were the absolute pits, "worst uber ever" wtf.

James, if it helps, she's actually been recruited by all the secret service agencies on planet earth working jointly, which is lol but somewhat less offensive?

Also the Vox Explainer on big data "govt agencies are full of old people who don't understand technology so they outsource to the private sector" - how about govt agencies are full of neoliberal zealots eager to hand their buddies in the private sector some cash?

Finally saw this. Now sighing, remembering when this show was clever.

thought the master reveal was fairly terrifying, and the monsters were pretty good, but everything else...

i'm used to the doctor being very spiky and uncooperative and arrogant with all government institutions so this one was v disappointing on that front (among many others)

didn't the doctor used to be wildly smarter than everyone else? funnier? both grumpier and more cheerful? not sure what happened here tbh

chris chibnall iirc

yeah, to be fair, the monsters are well done.

i mean EVERYTHING is a lie? the mets didn’t really win the world series in 1969? my mother is... my father and my father is my mother??

she's half her father on her mother's side

I love that y’all can’t even wait for part 2 to start bitching about the plot

Chibnall’s biggest problem seems to be that he thinks this is primarily a show for kids - where did he get such a preposterous idea

Robert Holmes thought it was almost exclusively a show for kids

ima gonna go all out and say this hit my minimum expectations for watchable dr who

(which bar last season frequently sailed way under, at least until stopped watching, so fair play to em)

Monsters effective yep, not sure I buy sacha dhawan...

No problem with it being a show for kids, just want it to be better than disposable trash for kids.

Just watched the first part of Mackenzie Crook's Worzel Gummidge adap, and somehow managed to find a show for kids to be delightful, charming, spooky, mildly witty, and to follow through on the premises and gags that it sets up.