WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

I don't even know where I'd find the consensus, I just come here. But yeah, even with a dead script to work with, he was terrible.

Stupid to even begin looking for logic in this mess, but WHY DID PRE-HARTNELL MARTIN DOCTOR'S TARDIS LOOK LIKE A POLICE BOX?

Also, WHEN did the Doctor have these Irish metaphor-memories? Never saw that happen.

Chibnall's awful fucking writing, argh, fuck.

oh, i didn't even get that brendan was never the cyberman. way to mask that story -- changing the setting to earth but leaving in the immortality. couldn't possibly leave the setting as a place where people actually regenerate.

When Brendan/Doctor fell, exactly as The Timeless Child/Doctor did, wouldn't he have regenerated to a new form, also exactly as...? Just one quibble out of so many. So much exposition, like watching cutscenes instead of being in the game. At least expectations are lowered for next season.

snap poll -at this point would it be kinder if it was cancelled?

also, is there a good reference for whatever weird and wrong considerations/negotiations saw Chibnall given the top job? i've seen it implied that he wasn't actually that keen. was moffatt involved in the "succession planining"? the lack of vision of installing Chibnall is matched only by the lack of vision he is bringing to the show.

feels like all this is karmic blowback for dissing pip and jane baker, now Chibnall is suffering under the curse of JN-T. the time was clearly right for a genuinely new voice/vision from outside the gene pool - not someone who occasionally wrote the occasional 11th-best episode in any given season.

When Brendan/Doctor fell, exactly as The Timeless Child/Doctor did, wouldn't he have regenerated to a new form, also exactly as...?

Maybe, but he wasn't real and never happened anyway - "these Irish metaphor-memories"

snap poll -at this point would it be kinder if it was cancelled?

nah. it's still fine if it's bad for a while as long as it then gets good again. the biggest problem is that Chibnall's so slow that his three seasons are probably going to take us through 2022, and they then might want to re-sign him to keep the 60th anniversary in a "safe pair of hands."

(reminder/update that at the end of five years into the Chibnall era, with Spyfall being a Parts 1&2 and Regurgitation Of The Daleks likely airing in 2021, we'll now only be at 20 Chibnall-run stories broadcast, and 14 by Moffat.)

also, is there a good reference for whatever weird and wrong considerations/negotiations saw Chibnall given the top job? i've seen it implied that he wasn't actually that keen. was moffatt involved in the "succession planining"?

We don't know anything much, no. BBC powerbods planned to cancel it after Davies & Gardner, assuming that nobody else could run it, and just do one-offs if they ever felt like it. RTD was very involved in making sure the series continued instead.

Apparently both Davies and Moffat were consulted re Chibnall being offered the gig, but we dunno if they both said "HE'S THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN DO IT" or "sure, our friend whom we have both hired and who has over 15 years showrunning experience seems employable." It absolutely shows a desperate paucity of imagination, and a failure to understand the show, but it's a good bet it was Broadchurch being a big hit that made him look like the candidate, not anyone actually watching his episodes.

(For mine, Mathieson looked like the best bet to take over and make a series with a varied tone, lots of fun ideas, and exciting new writers. It's a bummer that he hasn't had anything at all produced since, let alone had any showrunner experience, that could put him in the frame for next time.)

wouldn't he have regenerated to a new form

if you want to go down the regeneration lane: how did the Master make a living cyber-army out of Time Lords who were all definitely properly and absolutely dead? and how did they then start regenerating again after they were shot dead, again, with cyber-guns? (and why do the Cybermen build themselves so flimsy that they die from one zap of their own weapons, if they're meant to be a conquering army?)

obv any single 15-second chunk of this episode falls apart to this degree after 3 seconds of consideration

wow I sat this season out because I got sorta busy but it sounds like it really went off the rails

grim https://screenrant.com/doctor-who-chris-chibnalls-best-episodes-ranked/

xp It's almost like Bob Holmes was right when he abandoned the idea of Cyber Lords for The Five Doctors as being unworkable.

It's nice that Ryan's dyspraxia got cured again.

Chibnell really is the worst choice they could've made on an artistic level. I would've thought Gatiss would've been a much more obvious successor, and for all his flaws at least would've injected more vision and personality into his seasons? Quite baffled they didn't go with him.

OTOH rating are still decent, right?

Ratings are decent, not "good" but perfectly fine. Appreciation Index scores have slipped, though, and the show's mainly ranking in the top thirty programmes rather than the top ten.

Gatiss didn't really want to do it by the time the job came up, having by then seen what a massive ballache the executive part of the job is, what it requires in terms of being a public figure, and how mentally and physically exhausting the creative side of the role is, after one of his best mates and closest collaborator had been doing it for seven years. Plus it would have gotten in the way of him taking stage acting jobs and painting lessons. (Dare say he would have said yes if asked tho, the big old nerd.)

Even when he'd pitched for the gig in 2001 or w/e it was as part of a team of three - he's never had the hubris to imagine that he's an endless font of loads of different Dr Who stories that aren't basically "old-timey horror classics but with a different monster in"

he's never had the hubris to imagine that he's an endless font of loads of different Dr Who stories that aren't basically "old-timey horror classics but with a different monster in"

This would be a good trait for a showrunner! He'd be open to fostering and incorporating other writers' ideas. And as an overall direction I wouldn't mind the show leaning more towards horror.

Can't believe the state of things has led me to stan for an imaginary version of Mark Gattis.

This is fun - DWM in 1999 asking Davies, Moffat, Cornell, Gatiss, Roberts (and Lance Parkin) what they'd do if bringing Dr Who back to TV for a modern audience

emsworth, thank you for new dn

must say, i’m super glad i stepped away from this show

emsworth, thank you for new dn

haha, madness

iirc the back blast backlash will bounce back and destroy everything

I haven’t watched the last two stories yet but I am willing to admit that a) the show is kind of bad now, and b) it is nowhere near bad enough to damage my decades-long fandom

I point people toward the Myrka fight scene from Warriors of the Deep as an example of what I love about the show so my level of nonsense appreciation is pretty high

I am genuinely not sure what it would take for me to actually stop watching this show, but that doesn't mean I am currently enjoying it.

I got my Doctor Who thrills recently by watching Jethro Tull's 1980 video Slipstream which (as I mentioned in another thread) has powerful Doctor Who energy.

I am genuinely not sure what it would take for me to actually stop watching this show

Same here, but I do feel like I’m closer to it right now than I’ve been since Trial of a Timelord. It just seems hard to see how it can be not bad now, until a future show runner comes in and decides to either fully retcon or else just fully ignore this week’s awful bullshit.

(I did actually stop watching some time during the Baker/McCoy period but that was because the BBC started scheduling it against Coronation Street which meant mum wouldn’t let me have it on any more, and we didn’t have a video recorder so I couldn’t tape it).

honestly it feels good to do something else with the time

My thing is that if I can religiously watch the convoluted, poorly-edited 7th Doctor stories where 75% of them are solved by deus ex machina pulled out of the Doctor's ass at the 11th hour, I can watch this

I don't watch any other terrible TV, so I guess can cope with 9 hours of this every 2 years.

if I can religiously watch the convoluted, poorly-edited 7th Doctor stories

ah yes well you see, i am also unable to bear watching those stories

the difference is that those stories are great

mm this is not the first time that i have encountered that point of view! i have made repeated attempts to scale that mountain and am now settled into a very comfortable position re that era, viz. "it's just not for me"

how about Colin

the last two mccoy seasons felt like they were going somewhere interesting, even if that didn't happen with the show, unlike this cliffhanger. i'd say at least 3 of them were good stories too -- remembrance, the circus one, fenric. unlike the latest seasons which only had one -- demons of the punjab. maybe partial credit for graham's dilemma in rosa.

in terms of rewatching the old show for pleasure i get off the bus after caves of androzani

for reference i was 10 in 1984 and while i watched most of the c.baker episodes on broadcast, it was with a sense of utter confusion as to the show was like this now

when i watch the old show - rarely ATM - it's 90% about sitting in a nostalgic fug, and i probably spend more time appreciating the background details and music than i do the plotting/dialogue

Vengeance on Varos is great IMO

I was about to rank all the 1980s stories but maybe we should finally fill the 18 months until the next season with a series of runoff polls, as mooted through ILX history

i’ve finally seen the last two episodes, and the only unique comment i can add is that every doctor/master scene is a jackpot for bisexuals

Chibnall Who undecolourised:

This is Series 12 and I approve this message #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/efJ9SWZWfZ

— Kieran Highman (@The66Ramblers) March 6, 2020

What does that mean?

You can see the people and sets.

that lens flare though

God that was a boring episode!

Lowest-rated episode (on 7-day figures) in nu-Who history, placed 30th for the week.

On BBC America, S11 averaged 880k with 0.28 in 18-49 demographic. S12 opened with 790k and 0.19 in the demo, dropped to 370k and 0.12 by the finale.

what about catchup?

(on 7-day figures)

it only aired seven days ago tbf

(those BBCA figures are ON though)

VOSDAL was up over the week before, but only enough to make up the difference, and eps 1-9 had Call The Midwife as lead-in: so that's a statistical 3,000 viewers whose families sat through Who with them if they'd been watching already.

cheers sic

Apparently DWM, for the first time in its forty-year history, didn't review the episodes of this seasom.

Seasom: a meditative season.