Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

like we talk about how brilliant "underworld" is?

I've very nearly grown to appreciate Underworld.

Actually, it's Nightmare In Eden it's most like, now I think about it.

Tom Baker's Who novel Scratchman now costs 99p on Kindle, if that interests anyone.

The Faceless Ones animation debuted at #1 on the blu-ray chart, and #6 on DVD.

One of the animators on the BBC-made adaptations has posted a six-minute timelapse of him building one of the digital sets, which he made as a DVD bonus feature but didn't get included.

(It's a signal illustration of the loving dedication of the people working on these, and the limits of their actual expertise, that he reveals an extremely nerdy easter egg near the end. A newspaper clipping is stuck to the side of a filing cabinet, addressing the events of the Hartnell story of ten months earlier that's taking place elsewhere in London at the same time as this story. However, he appears to have never actually seen a newspaper at all, let alone what one designed and printed in 1966 looked like.)

super cool, thanks for the link! i'm still working my way through the blu-ray full season sets i picked up recently; had a total hoot with the "meglos" commentary!

In other "classic" news, Who twitter did a collective rewatch of Day Of The Doctor on Saturday. Steven Moffat created an account to join in and comment along, and scripted a new intro scene in the vein of the 50th anniversary cinema screenings, filmed and edited with social distancing. During the rewatch, the top non-pandemic hashtags in the UK were Who-related (including positions 1, 2, and 4), and things like "John Hurt" were still trending worldwide hours later.

To continue the lockdown party vibes, two further viewings have been planned:

Rose this Thursday, 26th March, at 7pm GMT (noon PDT in the US) - this is the (to the minute) 15th anniversary of original transmission, and Russell T Davies is also going to join Twitter for the evening, and apparently writing something new as well.

and The Eleventh Hour on Friday 3rd April, the 10th anniversary of broadcast.

(More are likely to follow, with other "creatives" lined up to tweet commentary.)

Faceless Ones is pretty tremendous to be honest, doesn't fall foul of the standard Pat trope of circular episodes (character X in peril at end of previous, escapes at beginning, japes, ends up on same peril at the end).

Rose <-- 5 years --> The Eleventh Hour <-- 10 years --> Now feels kind of trippy.

(I am pretty sure it would not be difficult to find examples of me complaining that the first gap should have been shorter)

especially trippy because the final Capaldi / Bradley special was also ten years ago

Adorably, Emily Cook, the DWM writer who has coordinated the collective rewatches, says of the Rose watch "Hopefully it'll encourage some younger viewers to discover 2005 Doctor Who for the first time..."
"

I did the Day of the Doctor rewatch, at least later the same day & it is still a great episode

I love how both Smith & Hurt doctors tease Tennant doc about his sandshoes :D

David Tennant’s Chuck Taylors are the greatest contribution to Who garb next to Tom Baker’s scarf

https://i.imgur.com/brQpiwa.jpg

Russell:

ROSE: THE PREQUEL. ...written for Doctor Who Magazine in early 2013, to show the Eighth Doctor regenerating into the Ninth. But! The Day of the Doctor script knocked that for six, continuity-wise, so this was buried deep. Until today! It’s a glimpse of parallel events... Brand new ROSE: THE SEQUEL tonight at 7.45!

Target format at RTD's instagram

The text at BBC.co.uk

RTD's new twitter for live commentary: https://twitter.com/russelldavies63

And new from Davies: ROSE: THE SEQUEL - a v good ten-minute audiobook short story.

(Clive's website is still up, btw)

The next rewatch has been slotted in for next Monday: Vincent And The Doctor, with writer Richard Curtis and sort-of-credited secret cowriter Emma Freud tweeting along.

RTD’s behind the scenes book is a lot of fun and my lockdown toilet book of choice right now. It’s maybe his best contribution to Who outside the first season

Rewatched “Rose” tonight

God I love the way they first introduce the Doctor in this ep, no matter how many times I watch it, it’s always exciting

https://tenor.com/H3r0.gif

And Rose & Jackie are great characters from the getgo. I loved Rose from the start, the way she would maybe panic briefly & then jump right in & help. Plus: *She* saves the Doctor! In the first episode!

“lots of planets have a north”😂

https://media.giphy.com/media/RXv8rfphhNiLK/giphy.gif

Ecclestone is so handsome too
sigh
love ‘im, i do

The next rewatch has been slotted in for next Monday: Vincent And The Doctor, with writer Richard Curtis and sort-of-credited secret cowriter Emma Freud tweeting along.

Also live-tweeting: Karen Gillan, Van Gogh actor Tony Curran, and Matt Smith will be contributing via Freud as proxy. Bill Nighy has also been named as tweeting, so Freud's gonna be busy typing if she's standing in for Curtis, Smith and Nighy as well as contributing her own thoughts.

Matt Smith and Bill Nighy will be live-tweeting during the global simulcast of 'Vincent and the Doctor' on Monday 30 March via THIS ACCOUNT! #TheUltimateGinger #DocotorWhoLockdown #DoctorWho

— Matt Smith & Bill Nighy #TheUltimateGinger (@LockdownWho) March 29, 2020

I missed the watchalong due to the clock change in the UK, will catch up later - but Am4zon Prim3 have made Vincent & The Doctor free to watch today.

Rob Shearman's audio play The Maltese Penguin, featuring the best Doctor Who companion ever, a shapeshifting alien who likes to stay in the form of a penguin, is free with code DOGBOLTER for 48 hours as an April Fools Day treat

(you need to make an account with Big Finish to download)

I have never read/heard a story with Frobisher in it

There are only two audios, and obv a lot of the character's strengths don't translate to the medium. But they're both written by Shearman, and/so one of them probably ranks in the top 77 Who stories of all time.

cheers sic! they’re also doing ‘the quantum possibility engine’ (sylvester + sophie) at half price, as part of the same 48 hour thing

which worked out to £3.19 for me

Moffat has reactivated his DOTD account to twoot with The Eleventh Hour tenth anniversary, and written this new Amelia Pond short story (performed by her original actress).

Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill (https://twitter.com/RattyBurvil) will also be burbling along, Matt Smith will be back on the Lockdown Who account, and director (/ Streets video bloke / live Chemical Brother / no relation) Adam Smith will be breaking the duckpond of https://twitter.com/flatnosegeorge

The costume designer Ray Holman (https://twitter.com/HolmanRay) also livetweeted Vincent & The Doctor, it turns out, and is doing doing a Q&A about the Eleventh's costume right now, to celebrate National Tweed Day.

Am4zong Pr!me have made the episode free to watch for the day - viewing starts in 45 minutes.

Next watchalong is this Saturday: The Doctor's Wife, with Neil Gaiman getting up early in New Zealand to tweet, and director Richard Clark also having a go.

Emily Cook, who's organising these, has confirmed that other Doctors will follow, it's just that creative folks from the Smith era have been proactively keenest so far.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/doctorwho/entries/a094ba61-81b2-465b-9b87-2f509fe2a117

Oh man, I miss Moffatt

Analogy time: Moffat is Autechre, Chibnall is Smashmouth.

I'd go more Squarepusher; Nickleback

Bucks Fizz:Scooch

(With RTD=Cliff)

For direct comparison, here's the short story Chibnall wrote for the website two weeks ago.

So short yet so padded

Lol that was bad fanfic

So short yet so padded

And he still makes time to reinforce his point that the right thing to do on meeting anyone slightly different from yourself is to murder them.

tbf this is Tennant's Doctor's MO only without all the faffing around

Analogy time: Moffat is Autechre, Chibnall is Smashmouth.

― Triceratops Vowell (Leee)

funny you should mention this, my transfem meetup group video chat last week spontaneously launched into singalongs of both "all-star" _and_ "walking on the sun"

there haven't, to my knowledge, been any autechre singalongs yet

i'll probably abandon this thread at some point too and i expect most of y'all won't ever understand why

I hope it's not something I said! D:

idk leee. did you mean that smashmouth ref as a snide joke? i'm pretty sure chap and jimd's follows were snide jokes. if your comment was a snide joke, i think it's a pretty good illustration of why i don't feel comfortable in the little micro-slice of fandom that tends to hand out here.

i'm loath to offer direct criticisms because it's a delicate subject, i might misspeak, and even if i don't misspeak i worry that what i say might be, uh, poorly received in a certain way.

for instance, i certainly would never accuse anyone here of being upset about doctor who being a woman. you all love jodie whitaker, she's a fine actor and does a great job, it's just too bad she has to work with all those horrible horrible scripts. the things chibnall says! it's not about women and minorities having a place on the show, it's about, you know, ethics in family science fiction programmes.

because it's chibnall, who is the white cis man, who is the problem, and it's ok to ignore everything else as long as you can point everything in the direction of the white cis man. oh, sure, it's wonderful that he's opened up the show, and by extension the fandom, to people who never had a place in it before, that he's used his power to give a much more powerful voice to women and minorities, but none of that is as important as the fact that he's a hack writer and he's not writing really clever stories for really clever people like moffat and the writers he used, an overwhelming number of whom were white cis men, did.

idk. that's the best i can do right now. i'm sorry.

i think you are using sarcasm to hide the weakness of your argument

(shrug)

I think those concerns are valid and tbh I share some of them but Chibnall himself has never been liked around here; going back through previous seasons, his stories are the ones most likely to be picked out by posters as the worst of the season. From there, it feels to me to be unfortunate coincidence that criticizing Chibnall's Who involves criticizing most of the most progressive casting choices the show has made and I also think a lot of what you're reacting to is the absolute refusal to give this era the benefit of the doubt given the number of good to great things they've done with the show (I think the Doctor being the genesis of the Time Lords is 100% silly but getting a new mystery Doctor with a shady, unknown past out of it is fantastic, for example).

Also, I am trying to imagine an Autechre singalong

i mean the infuriating thing is that i completely agree with the criticisms. chibnall _is_ a hack writer. i wish he was a better writer, i wish he could plot as deeply and movingly as moffat at his best, i wish he could write something as good as "blink". he can't. he never will.

so i guess i can hate-watch the show and wait for him to go and hope that whoever comes back is better or i can try to celebrate what there is to celebrate about the show, and there is a lot to celebrate. there are a lot of things chibnall does better than moffat, better than anyone before him. the show could never have done an episode like "rosa" before. the show has progressed a hell of a long way from fucking gareth roberts' hot takes on race, and i am so fucking happy about that. doctor who is an amazing show with a frequently-amazing queer fandom (i mean i guess levine is "amazing" in a certain sense of the term). i've been a fan of the show since i was 11 years old, more than 30 years, and i love it, and i never thought i would lose that love for it.

but everybody else here is firmly settled into hate-watch mode, and i'm not making an argument here, i'm just trying to say, look, i don't feel comfortable talking about the show here, and if i can't talk about the show, i don't have any motivation to watch the show, and honestly i was really enjoying watching the show. i just quit watching it because i got so worn down by folks here relentlessly shit-talking chibnall.

that's not anybody else's responsibility but my own. that's my own shit. i just, you know, wanted to let you know what some of the collateral effects of the hate-watching are.

I think Chibnall might be very good at a strict historical story

(They almost went there with "Rosa" but I would love to see this TARDIS crew have to navigate the Underground Railroad without having to deal with a space Nazi, for example)

Kate you realise this thread has mostly been people talking enthusiastically about Dr Who of late and you are coming in and naysaying their joyful experiences ;)

Michael Sheen is also going to be tweeting with the Doctor's Wife rewatch on Saturday btw!

it's wonderful that he's opened up the show... to people who never had a place in it before, that he's used his power to give a much more powerful voice to women

https://i.imgur.com/we3r7wh.jpg tbf

, and by extension the fandom,

No doubt that fandom was significantly unbalanced up until Tennant, but as a primary-schooler I was getting newsletters and zines mailed out by S4rah Gro3n3w3gen and Kat3 Orm4n every month, when I checked out DWAS pub meetings eight years ago they were 80-90% female, the only Who podcast I listen to semi-regularly is Verity!, the Chicks Dig Time Lords / Queers Dig Time Lords / Chicks Unravel Time essay-book series is a decade old... Women have totally opened up the fandom for themselves without needing a middle-aged cis white man to do it for them :)