Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

you're right to be skeptical, big-budget Ace

*crosses Roberts off the list of Who authors I am interested in reading*

https://unherd.com/2019/07/why-the-woke-cant-make-jokes/

tweeting at wokemills

he's made a bunch of transphobic tweets too

I saw that and was like “…wait what”

Yeah that’s a fucking dreadful article but it’s a LONG way from being the worst thing he’s put his name to recently: https://medium.com/@zmangareth/statement-on-bbc-books-and-transgenderism-dd7ad0c9231a

I’ve got his Shada novelisation somewhere and never got around to reading it, unlikely to ever bother now.

(Helpful of him to out all those other terf fucks at the end of his medium piece though, already knew about most of them but a couple were news to me).

His Shada novelisation is great, especially in the audiobook read by Lalla Ward and John Leeson. Roberts' all-day shouting like a prick on Twitter about how everyone is wrong but especially murderous Muslims, young people, TV executives, left-wing politicians, virtue signallers, climate change campaigners, Greta Thunberg, gay men who don't spend all day chainsmoking in a flat & reading 1970s TV listings, and Steven Moffatt appears to reflect a decades-long Toryism that has never stopped him writing warm, funny Who with a humanist perspective.

(Typed four screens of stuff about his attitudes but got xposted by an hour and deleted it, typed the above instead.)

Yeah I mean, I still like the books of his that I read. I just don't like him very much. (I would add "or spend money on him" but truth be told, I haven't bought a Doctor Who novel since... probably The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, which was kind of bad if I'm being honest about it, wtf Miles you were my go-to guy)

Yeah: I very much wouldn’t want to endorse his personal opinions with money, but on the other hand I’d have much more problem with spending £16.99 on a book filled with other people I don’t have any curiosity in reading, than with him getting 5.3 pence in royalties from me somewhere down the line.

his Shada book was good. But now i'm not so fussed he didn't get to do the other two Adams books (which I ahve and haven't read yet)

Three Adams books!

(Roberts was contracted to do Fisher, Williams and Adams’ City Of Death, but returned his advance & notes after several months’ work, deciding he couldn’t crack how to work it as a novel, vs having built Adams’ various drafts of the uncompleted Shada into a coherent story. After James Goss finished it, Goss was commissioned to do not only the full-Adams script of The Pirate Planet, but also adapt an idea that Adams had a) had rejected as a TV pitch in 1976, b) had rejected for a DW feature film in 1980, c) never actually written, and d) already turned into the third Hitch-hiker’s Guide novel 36 years before Goss turned it into a Who novel.)

you're speaking of city of death there?

oh, Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen , which I didn't even know had come out.

Wellllllll ok, fair enough, you’ve convinced me that I should read Shada anyway.

Which are the good Miles books, DJP? At least, the ones that don’t depend on reading six other books with an anti-climatic conclusion…

Highly highly recommend the Moff Target book btw

https://twitter.com/WhoGiants

Alien Bodies is the best one. Down from the Benny Books is also great.

Why do the actors who play companions and Doctors (i.e. regular cast) in nu-Who limit themselves to only a few seasons? If this were a US-produced property, you'd have the leads fighting to stay on for a 7-year run.

Tom Baker’s post-Who career possibly acting as something of a cautionary tale. Especially when contrasted with Peter Davison’s.

Same reasons as they did in the old series, with the addition that the new series is so physically taxing that the leads keep requiring reconstructive skeletal surgery mid-contract, rather than only needing to be on their feet a couple of hours a week

xp

Peter Davison’s an anomaly, in that he was already so busy as a headliner when he took the role, that Who had to shut down production for months mid-season while his dayjob sitcom was taping.

(In 2017 they just wrote around Bradley Walsh spending weeks at a time taping his dayjob gameshow)

Same reasons as they did in the old series

I don't know these reasons!

with the addition that the new series is so physically taxing that the leads keep requiring reconstructive skeletal surgery mid-contract, rather than only needing to be on their feet a couple of hours a week

Wait, who? I don't think I ever heard of say Jennifer Garner needing anything as serious as surgery when she was doing her own fight scenes in for ~20 episodes over 4-5 seasons of Alias.

iirc Tennant and Smith both had knee reconstructions and Capaldi had back surgery? I’m on zing atm

I don't know these reasons!

Because they find a variety of work more interesting to do, and they can earn a lot more money for a lot less work elsewhere, once their profile has been raised on a teatime children’s show about a space wizard.

(Aside from the pay and catering of a Terminator movie, or the pay and comfort of going home from the West End to your own bed with your model girlfriend in it, Smith can now make his yearly Dr Who salary in two weekends’ appearance fees at American conventions.)

a teatime children’s show about a space wizard.

look

lol

completely unfair. doctor who is a teatime _family_ show about a space wizard.

Lawrence Miles having a go at Roberts (one of several tweets on the topic today, in a couple of threads):

Yes. Yes, it does remind me of something, Gareth. It reminds me of the mid-'90s period when you worked in mainstream TV and your coke habit led to your becoming nervy, disturbed, and utterly self-obsessed. (And writing "Zamper".)

Think you'll find that was you, not "everybody". pic.twitter.com/OjqEci8GZ7

— Dr Who Drinking Game (@DWDrinkingGame) July 29, 2019

lol “writing Zamper”

a teatime children’s show about a space wizard.

mods pls change thread title

porting from the Chibnall thread:

i came dangerously close to ordering some BF audios today. Talk me down.

― Mince Pramthwart (James Morrison), Tuesday, October 9, 2018 8:30 PM (one year ago)

Discovered recently that Nev Fountain has written several Big Finish spinoffs headlining female characters. The Diary Of River Song: Series 3 episode 1: The Lady In The Lake is a mixture of time-hopping playfulness including River interacting with earlier and later versions of herself, a riff on a setting from a Fifth Doctor story (Davison himself shows up at the end, and River leaves to be his companion for the rest of the series), and some fairly grim examination of both regeneration and River's own origins.

If I had more time, I'd buy a ton more Big Finish... it's been a few years now, but when I was listening to them they were more consistently good than the TV show storywise.

Episode 2 of the same series, A Requiem For The Doctor is a fun quasi-historical by Jac Rayner, that gets plenty of comedy out of go-getter know-everything River's frustration with the most passive and self-doubting of the Doctors.

Episode 3, My Dinner With Andrew by John Dorney, is a real delight. Adding River-standard time-out-of-order shenanigans to a farce pastiche, it features multiple Peter Davisons, Madame Kovarian and a comedy French waiter, and is mostly set in a restaurant with similarities to Davison's last TV appearance before his Dr Who debut. It's a treat to get another comedy so cleverly structured very-nearly-next-to a Nev Fountain joint (switching the balance firmly towards jokes, in this one).

as excited as I was for the last season i completely stopped watching halfway through. Should I finish it?

Demons of the Punjab, Kerblam!, and It Takes You Away were fun/interesting, I think all in the second half?

You mean the first Chibnall season? IIRC the episodes from the last half of the season that ILX liked were "Demons of the Punjab," "It Takes You Away," and maybe "The Witchfinders." Though I don't personally think any of those would make my shortlist of can't-miss nu-Who ("It Takes You Away" comes closest). xp

Yeah, if you're only going to watch one, make it It Takes You Away. Most eps are pretty terrible in various ways, but that's the one that bothers to use the can-be-anything card the series has built in, without also being alarmingly conservative in both politics and creative scope.

Chibnall thread is here btw: WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

thanks. I'll probably dip back in and cross my fingers that the next series fares a bit better.

The four half-recommendations above are all the non-Chibnall eps - you can safely skip his (I'd actively warn against Kerblam too, but from other threads this week I don't think you'd have any of the same objections).

I think Arachnids was the last one I watched and it was fairly dire.

i remember moderately enjoying the Dalek one, but let’s accept they were all terrible the Doctor talks like a an overmatey estate agent now

obviously I am excited about the new one

I sort of want Jamie Demetriou to be the Doctor next

Also entertaining and recent in Big Finish: a Scottish trifecta 12th Doctor "Short Trip" (single-performer short audio, in this case Madame Vastra actress Neve McIntosh) by Lizbeth Myles: a 99% straight historical that embroils 12 with real-life C17th playwright and spy Aphra Behn on the cusp between the two careers.

Was listening to RED MOON, an audio play series set in an alternative history version of 1979, and was pleased to hear in the background of one scene a TV announcer saying, "And now Graham Crowden starring as Doctor Who, in episode four of The Curse of the Jagaroth".

I'm watching the new series with my kids, we just got to The Eleventh Hour and it went down very well indeed, think series 5/6 is going to be their favourite.

yesssss

Eleventh Hour remains the peak regeneration story of nuWho by some margin.