WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

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.

Did they explain why?

Seems not. Also apparently in the last issue, they said there would be a full season review in the next issue, but then there wasn't.

Obviously the only conclusion to draw is that every single review was filed but contained hidden messages spelling out "CHIBNALL IS A CUNT" and had to be spiked, one by one

I am still a huge fan of this show and I will continue watching it but WOW was that a gigantic load of wank

Apparently only 33 stories have rated lower in the whole history of the show since 1963, for what that's worth.

(That's probably episodes, not stories btw - the old series had 155 stories in 695 episodes, nu-Who has 130 stories in 165 full-length televised eps so far.)


([I don't know that anyone's averaged out each story's ratings across 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12 or 14 episodes, interesting as that would be, but comparing 1960s and 2020 ratings is apples and kumquats anyway: the sort of numbers that have the show plummeting into the 30s on the chart now would have it falling out of its regular place in the 50s-90s in 1968, and did have it falling off the chart altogether in 1989.])

I am by no means the most qualified Who viewer to weigh in, but I do love the show... after finally catching up with the last few eps, this season was the worst of any I can think of, the finale was garbage, and Chibnall should be canned.

on Day Of The Doctor comparisons: Who twitter is doing a quarantine watchalong of the special rn (Moffatt has rejoined twitter for the occasion and is commenting along at #savetheday), and every 2-minute chunk has at LEAST as much character, plot, visual play and verbal jokes as the clip upthread

As does this:

Yes! Here it is, courtesy of @StevenWMoffat and with the help of @McIntoshNeve, my esteemed colleague Strax entreats you to #SaveTheDay and join us in our viewing of The Day of The Doctor. Today at 7pm GMT, 3pm EST and all around the world! #DoctorWho pic.twitter.com/ljqFWM6QRE

— Dan Starkey (@StanDarkley) March 21, 2020

Love that early 2000s DWM article posted upthread that basically rips on all the ideas Chibnall had in the finale.

Rewatching the special was fun. I didn’t find Clara especially interesting at the time but she might as well be a Karmazov brother next to Yaz.

Osgood also fun. Not sure why they messed around with that character.

- across 17 Chib-era stories with new aliens in, we've had

Tzim-Sha, of the warlike Stenza
space racist Krasko
pilot's brother Durkas *
alien tree monsters the Morax
amnesiac pilot Paltraki vs the religious Ux in The Battle of Ranskoor Av Kolos
interdimensional Kasaavins
spider monsters the Skithra
plastic virus Praxeus
nightmare werewolf monsters the Chagaska
and what is Ko Sharmus?

the planetary surface of Fintleborxtug

sounds like they at bare minimum need help coming up with alien species names

they at bare

Only two of those don't have Chinballs as credited scriptwriter, and it seems hugely unlikely that the other two didn't have his thumb on hte naming scale

The scripts for Series 12 are up on the BBC website now, giving more insight into Chibnall's writing approach.

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

So vomit.

The amazing iconic trio.

https://i.imgur.com/ZOr5oXt.png


https://i.imgur.com/Ptyzs8h.jpg

So non-consensual.

https://i.imgur.com/oq4CtHm.jpg

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

Their love for each other clear. Sad!

lolol at both

so glad i stopped watching this

https://sharedmedia.grahamdigital.com/photo/2017/04/28/President%20Trump%20in%20yellow%20chair.jpg_9620156_ver1.0_1280_720.jpg
"Their love for each other, people say it's one of the clearest loves in history. So sad!"

Does... he not read back over his own scripts?

Watching the episodes, they certainly felt like first drafts.

Honestly, given these scripts I am even more amazed that the cast has delivered the characters I watched.

Yeah hats off to cast and crew for elevating these scripts to even slightly below mediocre.

So acting

Does... he not read back over his own scripts?

― chap, Tuesday, May 12, 2020 7:33 PM (yesterday)

one might have thought this guy was being rudely hyperbolic two years ago but

There are times where it seems Chibnall has set himself a rule where all of these have to be written in order, and he can’t go back and change anything ... once he’s written it.

“Are we eligible too?”
“No, you’re irrelevant.”

It’s like he’s written himself a note, but forgotten to do anything about it on a second draft.

(so pioneering)

at least this was just the new setup finding its feet and didn't remain a constant trait of the era

The dialogue is generally completely empty, the sort of thing that you might put in as a placeholder when blocking the plot, and then come back to fill in with character beats or jokes or subtle foreshadowing or ironic counterpoints. Chibnall does give the occasional line with spark to Jodie, such as “Taking it as a chance to surprise myself,” or “It’s very all that!” suggesting he is aware of the need to make her stand out to the audience. But equally, it suggests he doesn’t see the need for anyone else to do so. Why have a rammed-full TARDIS team of four if three of them are just there to ask “What’s that, Doctor?!” Even more so if her answer every time is “I don’t know, let’s all figure it out at the same time on the next page of the script when someone tells us.”

Keep thinking about the "iconic trio" thing. Has a phrase ever been less apt?

Related to DJP’s point above, they’re kind of iconic to me in the sense that I’ve never pulled so hard for a cast to somehow rise above the incredibly bad material and convince me there are actually stories worth caring about hidden somewhere in all the layers of dumb.

I’ve never had particularly high expectations for doctor who, so it’s difficult for me to be disappointed in it sometimes, but this season was certainly a nadir.

Those scripts are horrible. Imagine really wanting to put work into that pap and try to make something fun out of it, or to try and convince anyone there’s any stakes.

This thread looks at things that went awry between Ed Hime's script and the produced episode of Orphan 55.

Honestly, this kinda confirms what I thought about O55 - the script is genuinely quite good, super fun to read, pops off the page, but it's so let down by the visuals. Like, this scene reads so tense and aesthetically interesting, and it comes out ... just kinda there. pic.twitter.com/JbURzdKVNP

— Sam Maleski (@LookingForTelos) May 11, 2020

(And has a hint that Chibnall took at least a light pass at this, one of three scripts that he didn't add his name to this year:

Sidenote/nitpick: god those scripts use "ICONIC" so fucking much as a descriptor.

)

Script action/parentheticals being semi-literate and cliched is more common than you might think.

(...for tv scripts in general. i haven't looked at many Who scripts.)

This is from the joint script for Fugitive of the Judoon with Vinay Patel. If only Chibnall had some sort of writerly tell, so you could guess which lines were his

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

the (Beat) as well