Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

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 :)

Yeah, I can see how looking at Chibnall purely through a hack lens can be used as a screen for vague or unspoken unease about the new direction the show has taken in, but I want to state (for myself at least) that his casting decisions have been important in terms of broadening who can and can't be a hero, despite the quality of writing. I do hope that this diversification continues into the future, though of course with better writing. All the same, I don't have compunction about separating the two qualities, but I understand if it's not the case for others. And, I'll be honest, I'm not sure how to be better in this case, the best I can manage is to offer empathy.

And yes, the Smashmouth reference was definitely meant snidely, I kind of assumed that that wouldn't be considered a challop. Autechre wasn't intended as unadulterated praise, though, I wanted to capture Moff's indulgent streak as well as his complicated plots.

xps I'm not trying to hate-watch the show! I'm a committed fan, and want it to be better, and have continued to hope that the odd episode is good. I can see how the negativity can be read as hate-watching, and here I absolutely can relate when it feels like I'm the one who's out of step with the consensus.

ahh. i don't agree with everything you say but i'm not here to argue or nitpick. there are lots of people who came up as fans, people like davies and moffat and chibnall, who got their grounding, cut their teeth on other shows, and then when they had enough television experience they got to be, or in chibnall's case were brow-beat into being, runners of one of the bbc's marquee shows, a complicated and stressful and difficult job that you can't just leap into doing from being a DWAS chapter president or whatever.

i owned two of the new adventures books, "the left handed hummingbird" and "the highest science". one of those writers was given the opportunity to write for the show under rtd and moffat despite lack of previous television experience. that writer is no longer associated with the show for reasons primarily relating to his transphobia.

but that's not really an argument, is it? that's just one data point, it proves nothing. i have a couple, you have way more. it's just death by a thousand rhetorical cuts, and you know way more about the show, you're way better at that kind of argument, than i could or will ever be.

not here to pick a fight i can't win. i like you, i think you're good and thoughtful and insightful, and i'm walking away from the show, well, mostly because of you. that is, to repeat, entirely my shit.

that was an xp to sic btw

I'm not trying to defeat you, rather providing data points that can be taken positively. Even if none of them became showrunner after writing or directing!

(tbf the 3 men you named as examples are the entirety of the "lots of people" who came up as fans and cut their teeth etc. in the 57 years of the show to date)

(Roberts had been a full-time TV scriptperson for a decade before he got to write on the Doctor Who TV show btw, and still had to write I Am A Dalek for BBC Books as a "fuck you, I can do this in your mode" bcz RTD wouldn't consider him. <-- This is offered as an interesting factoid that might slightly enrich the reader's consideration of some episodes, not as a rhetorical clapback.)

[0rman has, I believe, never tried to write drama at all, let alone to debut at it by getting commissioned on one of television's biggest international successes, when she lives in a different hemisphere from the pitch meetings. If her not writing a novel in the last 15 years is due to resistance from Penguin or Justin Rich4rds, that would be a shame and an injustice, but I suspect it is largely down to personal circumstances.] <-- not necessarily rah-rah yay, but a woman never choosing to do something is more positive than assuming she was barred from doing it at a high level

I'd love to see a Paul Magrs script

sure, it's just that ultimately my argument isn't really a data-driven argument. as always i do think you make good points!

I do recommend Verity for getting back into the current era, if listening to women chat enthusiastically after each episode would stand in for reading ppl do it here

yeah if i was into podcasts or twitter or blogs or any of that stuff i'd probably be way more hype about the show, basically y'all are the only people i know who actually watch the show instead of saying "fezzes are cool" or whatever the fuck. i used to read el sandifer's blog and then she started talking about alan moore and grant morrison and i jumped ship...

FWIW I went through a fez phase, I'm not even embarrassed.

I see that there are posts that ILX is still not ready for.

it's cool leee, i actually really like meme fandom, i just wish some of them would actually watch the show once in a while

I'm not hate watching. I want this show to be good. I just am disappointed a lot, with good cause.

Another Big Finish sale: the first 50 releases for €1.49 each.

(You'll have to use wikipedia to see who wrote each play though)

I am inevitable going to buy a bunch of these because they look promising, and be massively annoyed by their crapness.

i feel kind of bad for venting about y'all yesterday. i am frustrated at how cut off i feel from the fandom, but today it's more taking the form of quibbles about questionable brand management going back decades. today i'm just running over in my mind all the times the bbc actively fucked up the brand marketing in ways that cripple the fandom, the ways in which they're continuing that legacy to this day.

i'd kind of like to see that "faceless ones" recon but i guess it's not being released in america? and that's on top of everything in fandom being fucking paywalled. i'm actually not broke for a change (check back in a month to see if i've been laid off...) but sometimes being a who fan in america feels like being a supporter of a dodgily run charity devoted to an unquestionably good cause.

as far as big finish goes, i actually listened to the first 50! a huge chunk of them were crap. i feel like they perhaps peaked around #50 and since then have sort of drifted towards a merch-based business model?

AIUI a big chunk of the budget comes from BBC America, who buy broadcast rights to the new animations, so it won't be released until after they air it on telly. Which is more than fair, if frustrating. (This is why they've animated the existing episodes as well, and done the whole thing widescreen and in colour.)

((Although as they also put a B&W conversion pillarboxed on another disc, the widescreen is presumably protected for 4:3 and as spookily empty as watching That '70s Show on Netflix.))

My impression is also that the hit-rate has gone down massively since the first 50 Big Finishes, when about 20% of them were good.

I can actually make recommendations about the first fifty Big Finishes, that's about when I stopped buying them (I think I have them all up through about #70... jeez they're over 250 now)

"Fair" is kind of a loaded word. To what extent is making programs only available through this weird archaic system where you pay $100 a month for a bunch of shit you don't want to see "fair"? To what extent is market capitalism "fair"? I mean I recognize the obvious issue of scope there but I'm very used to very reasonable and "fair" systems creating grossly unfair and inequitable outcomes. That's what it means to be American.

i think that’s a set of interesting points tbh. i keep meaning to write a big bbc thing but partly for professional reasons and partly for reasons of personal capacity don’t really feel able to. but to take that single small point, i don’t think the bbc really realised what they had when they revived dr who. afaict they didn’t expect it to be as wildly successful as it was (as i think i said before internally i think it’s recognised “it’s not what it was” but that happened probably very slightly prior to capaldi.

what i do think, for all sorts of reasons, is that if they want to address of on requirements of them they’re going to need to be able to support, sustain and allow autonomous power to independent fandoms and groups. especially in the younger demographics. that they will have more power if they let go a bit and provide the connective and communicative capability between those groups. i’m not sure what that looks like exactly but kate’s point about mismanagement would be far easier avoided if they did let go a bit more.

I mean, I feel like the brand mismanagement, from an American standpoint, goes back farther than that. I am part of a whole generation of American fans who saw Doctor Who broadcast, frequently in omnibus format, on their local PBS stations every week. And then Lionheart, the US distributor, decided, for what I am sure are sensible and fair reasons, to jack up the price of the episodes, and the consequence of that was that all the PBS stations stopped showing Doctor Who. And then there was the New Adventures, when the BBC, not really realizing what they had, licensed out the brand to Virgin, where a whole host of talented writers put together what was often some excellent and creative work under a sympathetic editor who made room for writers like Kate Orman. And at some point some head over at the BBC saw what was going on and decided to bring the whole thing in house, under a different editor, who oversaw a bunch of books which nominally continued from the "New Adventures" but which, I have read many times (I haven't read any of the BBC books, because I was poor, and because distribution was perhaps not quite as good), were kept under a rather tighter editorial grip, and therefore lacked the spirit of adventurousness which characterized the best of the New Adventures. This is a pattern. This is how the Corporation has dealt with the show over and over and over again, and I'm sure every fandom has its gripes with the people who hold the IP. Mine just happen to be at a particularly high pitch at present.

To what extent is making programs only available through this weird archaic system where you pay $100 a month for a bunch of shit you don't want to see "fair"?

Broadcasters getting to broadcast the thing they've produced or funded or licenced is fair all around. Public service broadcasters having to seek copro from commercial entities due to ideologically-motivated cuts is unfortunate to say the least, but a reasonable approach in the circs, esp. when they don't surrender any underlying rights. Claiming something is "only" ever going to be available a certain way when it is available in other ways, and will be available the specific way that you want it in a month or three, is less fair.

especially in the younger demographics. that they will have more power if they let go a bit and provide the connective and communicative capability between those groups.

This certainly seems to be happening in the post-Edw4rd-Russ3ll era, whether on purpose or just because nobody has as tenacious a grip on the tiller: the two Twitch marathons, the BBC rushing behind Emily Cook's own initiatives with the lockdown watchalongs and trying to scoop up the new material that Moffat and Davies have just been writing & producing direct to fans on public platforms...



what the heck btw, f. hazel have a go too

5 "The Fearmonger" Jonathan Blum Seventh/Ace February 2000

Written as if it was the opening story of Season 27, capturing the characterisation and tone of TV Sylv'n'Soph in a way that no other audios tried to, comics achieved, or the books were interested in. Of course a plot about being being ratcheted up into constant anxiety and resentment by nefarious forces in the media is ridiculous science fiction today. V good.

6 "The Marian Conspiracy" Jacqueline Rayner Sixth/Evelyn Smythe March 2000

Introduces a regular "elderlyish history professor" companion for Six, a pairing that works much better than him with a young woman to whom he can condescend. Good.

14 "The Holy Terror" Robert Shearman Sixth/Frobisher November 2000

Shearman's first, fucking great.

16 "Storm Warning" Alan Barnes Eighth/Charley Pollard January 2001

Introduces Eight's first regular audio companion. This is fine iirc?

18 "The Stones of Venice" Paul Magrs Eighth/Charley March 2001

One of the better, odder Eighth Doctor novel writers making his audio debut with sound design as appealingly florid as his writing. Good.

25 "Colditz" Steve Lyons Seventh/Ace/Elizabeth Klein October 2001

Alternate-universe-ish Nazi setting that introduces a recurring antagonist-ish character. Lots of good premise and plot and character stuff that is often let down by McCoy plainly reading the script for the first time in the vocal booth.

27 "The One Doctor" ___ & Clayton Hickman Sixth/Mel December 2001

Treating Six and Mel in a context that they work: as nigh-panto straight-man protagonists in a comedy. Great.

28 "Invaders from Mars" Mark Gatiss Eighth/Charley January 2002

Top nostalgia/pastiche Gatissery (directed as well as written), making a celebrity historical out of the Orson Welles 1938 War Of The Worlds broadcast. V good.

29 "The Chimes of Midnight" Robert Shearman Eighth/Charley February 2002

Time-loopy haunted-house Christmas ghost story. Like a BBC MR James adaptation as a Dr Who. F great.

34 "Spare Parts" Marc Platt Fifth/Nyssa July 2002

A secret history of the Cybermen with actual characterisation and body horror, by one of the last telly writers of Who. RTD got him money and a small credit for stuff Davies nicked for the Tennant Cybermen two-parter: this is much better than that.

36 "The Rapture" Joseph Lidster Seventh/Ace September 2002

This one is not really good as such, but the CD cover was great: the story is set in Ibiza with an earnest just-coming-out young clubber, and they dropped Big Finish trade dress for this one to make it look like a cheap trance compilation instead

39 "Bang-Bang-a-Boom!" ___ & Clayton Hickman Seventh/Mel December 2002

A loving parody of Star Trek and the Eurovision Song Contest, together at last. Great.

40 "Jubilee"
Robert Shearman Sixth/Evelyn January 2003

The story that got Shearman his TV commission to write Dalek. Approximately 90x better than that, and one of the best Dr Who things ever.

43 "Doctor Who and the Pirates" Jacqueline Rayner Sixth/Evelyn April 2003

A historical romp that iirc turns into a full-on Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera for one whole episode. V good.

46 "Flip-Flop" Jonathan Morris Seventh/Mel July 2003

A small triumph of the CD format, this riff on It's A Wonderful Life and Groundhog Day came on CDs that weren't numbered, and could be listened to in either order. Good.

47 "Omega" Nev Fountain Fifth/Omega August 2003
48 "Davros" Lance Parkin Sixth/Davros September 2003
49 "Master" Joseph Lidster Seventh/The Master October 2003

Haven't heard any of these but they're all well-regarded: afaik I've sought out every other Nev Fountain release, but just can't be motivated to rewatch Arc Of Infinity to remember what Omega's whole deal is.

I don’t think that’s a fair characterization of the 8th Doctor BBC books given the Faction Paradox/Iris Wildthyme shenanigans, let alone stuff like Rags.

Public service broadcasters having to seek copro

sic again, i love you but we have this habit of talking past each other, the way i read that last word was _not_ the sense in which you meant it i am certain. (i agree with what you said in the sense that you _didn't_ mean it!)

39 "Bang-Bang-a-Boom!" ___ & Clayton Hickman

ah fuck are we doing damnatio memoriae now? honestly, i don't feel like the man's done enough to deserve that honor! he wrote a couple of reasonably funny scripts that decently ape douglas adams without any of adams' deceptively thoughtful and philosophical underpinnings, it's not like the man is i__ l_____

a) thought about hyphenating but enjoyed the extra metaphorical implication

b) just don't want to put off anyone who would otherwise enjoy very silly and fun stories by a nice man whom everyone likes

i get where you're coming from but at some point they're going to have to learn that milkshake duck used to write for doctor who, right? i figure might as well let 'em know up-front and avoid any nasty surprises later. i have had my share of that sort of nasty surprise.

more for people who are aware of the duck's tweets already but haven't enjoyed the earlier, tasty milkshake

anyway FOR THE "THE DOCTOR'S WIFE" WATCHALONG TOMORROW

Writer Neil Gaiman, director Richard Clark, and voice actor Michael Sheen will all be tweeting from 8pm UK time, noon rushomancy time, and something like 4am where Gaiman is. You can click on this link at the time to get all three's tweets in one place, and there will be another new something-or-other uploaded to complement the episode.

bonus fun from RTD: that Rose: The Sequel story got formatted as a Target novelisation on his instagram, and the other day he drew a cartoon of Daleks breaking social isolation:

https://i.imgur.com/Qyg60A3.jpg