WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

so excruciating

Okay, so Caitlin Blackwood who played Amelia Pond is now the same age that adult Amy Pond was in The Eleventh Hour.

(Look, old Doctor Who fans *always* feel old. It's about time young Doctor Who fans starting suffering too.) pic.twitter.com/1i9vYDgV8z

— Scott Gray (@Scott1Gray) October 9, 2020

Ah Jesus, there's no call for that.

especially not if one thinks at first it means she's returning in the Chris Chibnall era 😬

Could do a Captain Jack style cameo.

Haven't even thought about what a post-pandemic Who will be like tbh.

it's gonna be all in the style of Captain Jack cameos, with no guest actors appearing in the same shot as the regulars

I regret to inform you that they are continuing to make this television show

https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2020-11-11/doctor-who-chris-chibnall-cuts-news/

I watched through Torchwood this year and I noticed that Chibz recycled some ideas into the latest season of Who.

The second-last episode of Torchwood season 2 featured short flashbacks of the characters, leading you to think that some might die, just like Who S12 gave the companions some pointless flashbacks in its second last episode. It actually worked better in Torchwood because the characters were in life peril, while in Who it I didn't know why they were doing flashbacks all of a sudden.

Torchwood also has a scene where a hero looks for something in a lighthouse and finds nothing, but then sees something important out of the window -- a scene so unmemorable and unimportant that most synopses of the episode don't even mention it. In Torchwood they see a person walking away; in Who it's a gravestone that could easily have been seen anywhere on the ground.

8 episodes rather than 12 is a blessing, partic if this is chibber's last series

(so final)

irl lol

It’s going to be as fun filled and action packed as ever – with plenty of surprises.”

citation needed

I watched through Torchwood this year and I noticed that Chibz recycled some ideas into the latest season of Who.

I rewatched Oxygen this week. Was dumbfounded at how this program could go from a tight, clever horror story that is explicitly about capitalism hollowing out workers' lives & literally valuing their existence below that of equipment one year, to Kerblam!'s "if Amazon accidentally kill your coworker on the job, then halving your pay is a good compensation bcz you still have a job" as a positive message the next year under Chibnall.

Mathieson also briefly does the same joke as Chibnall's "Tim Shaw" here, except that the point is that Bill is being unthinkingly xenophobic by hearing a foreign name as English, not repeatedly celebrating her for pwning a forrin.

I remember when I used to look forward to seeing what this show did next. The end of the previous series was so awful I still get sporadically angry about it.

anyway Tracer OTM re 8 eps, but there's no way - given his two-year delays between seasons - that Chibnall won't be planning on staying on, to ensure that the show is in a "safe pair of hands" for the 60th anniversary episodes.

bring on more classic blu-ray sets!

actually belay that blessing - Chibs was credited on writing seven episodes last year, so the reduction probably just means a greater density of chinballs overall

also lol at me using the same scarequotes again

i still haven't seen most of the last season - gave up on spyfall halfway through, watched the jo martin one, and the last three. am i missing anything?

the only time i've liked whitaker was her homemade covid vid. more of that next season

You didn't miss anything. The only bits I liked were the parts of Judoon written by Vinay Patel.

Which is the Jo Martin one

the judoon one

I still regularly think about how bad the Ian McElhinney / Master showdown was

I know this sucks to most people, but my son loves it and we've had a blast watching it with him.

your son is a tasteless n00b who needs to watch some older that's great!

Yeah the Judoon one is inarguably classic but I peeked at the synopses for the other episodes and could hardly remember any of them.

We've tried to steer him to some older ones, but he really can't get past the older special effects to be willing to try more. Figure we'll give it a go in another year or so.

Terrible first episode of DALEKS!, paced so glacially it makes a Troughton 19-parter look zippy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-HJqrE0fbk

chibz has full sign-off on this stuff iirc

holy lol @ DALEKS!

"Chief Archivia, the visitor center is destroyed! The damage is... incalculable!"
"CALCULATE IT!"

worst boss ever

Terrible first episode of DALEKS!, paced so glacially it makes a Troughton 19-parter look zippy.
📹

DALEKS! was like a fever dream, how can it exist? how can enough people have found the energy to make it happen? was anyone in charge?

I thought it was on the endearing end of crap

A friend has pointed out that this is the first sight of Ireland in Doctor Who - obviously if we're a race that can turn the last Timelord into the last Cyberman, some buildup was required!

― Andrew Farrell, Thursday, February 27, 2020 8:57 PM (eight months ago)

we regret to inform you that you were mistaken

Subtitling fail on the Doctor Who series 12 blu ray pic.twitter.com/VQBNSLj0OM

— Eddie Robson (@EddieRobson) November 24, 2020

out of morbid curiosity i read the wikipedia synopsis of tHe TiMeLeSs cHiLd (which I have not seen) and instantly threw my phone across the room in disgust and also crashed my car and kicked my television in with Ian Levene's hammer

irl giggle

thing is that the wikipedia synopsis about plot facts, whatever one thinks about the facts, surely does not convey what a poorly constructed and tediously produced piece of television it is. (basically the Master locks the Doctor in some Xmas lights and reads the wikipedia summary to her for 40 minutes, then someone we've never met touchingly sacrifices themself for, er, something.)

Thank you sic, that is the suppurating cherry on top.

I remember those Island/Ireland subs being wrong in iplayer when it first went out, impressive that it still didn't get fixed between then and the BR.

lol wow

on the other hand, they should have included the American subtitles as an alternate track on the Danny Pink finale, where him sitting on a bench and telling Clara "I got our bench" was captioned as "What up, bitch?"

hahaha, really?!?!

I misremembered, it was Flatline

No full season in 2019; there’s definitely one episode on NYD, and the PR language leaves room for other specials.

― sans lep (sic), Monday, December 10, 2018 11:25 AM (two years ago)

This means that in the first five (5) years of his contract, Chibnall will have produced two (2) series of the show.

(Without any further specials, he’ll have done 22 episodes during his 5-year tenure, and Moffatt will have done 14.)

― sans lep (sic), Monday, December 10, 2018 11:30 AM (two years ago)

That 22nd episode, Revolution (Of The Daleks) will now be inaugurating Chibnall's sixth calendar year as showrunner on January 1st, fourteen months after it was filmed.

The typical finger-on-the-pulse political instincts of the era will likely be magnified, as reports of the trailer suggest that it concerns Chris Noth's Trump analogue from the 2018 series, whom the Doctor and police officer Yaz let stroll off after committing a bunch of near-murders and crimes, now having sold Daleks as security drones to an analogue of 2019's UK PM Theresa May.

To be fair, the fewer he does the better, given the general state of things.

Counterpoint: he should release more quickly so that we can get a new showrunner in sooner than later.

Some minor spoilers for the next episode have been released by the BBC. Stuff that's been predicted in this thread.

That it will be terrible?

It will also apparently be Tosin Cole and Bradley Walsh's last episode.

having just spent a heatwave weekend binging junk tv on Netflix,
I am in the very strange and unnatural situation
of feeling absolutely indifferent about contemporary Doctor Who
but surprisingly engaged by the new Star Trek series

Counterpoint: he should release more quickly so that we can get a new showrunner in sooner than later.

Even at the pace he's going, we could get an eight-episode Mathieson-run audition-to-take-over season, an eight-episode Gatiss-run cozy+horror season, and a full 13-episode run written by Grant Morrison in between each Chibnall season.

It's not like there are any ongoing plotlines or character development in his own "main" seasons that would be disrupted!

and god, the amount of visual & audio storytelling in this two minute (excerpt of Day Of The Doctor) outdoes the average Chibnall episode in total. It's bonkers that so many Moffat eps got injuriously filleted down to 43 minutes when Chibnall gets 49 every week, and just fills it with three members of the cast describing what's happening to each other, instead of using moving pictures and editing to communicate to the audience

― Fantastic. Great move. Well done (sic), Thursday, February 27, 2020 5:21 AM (nine months ago)

BBC1 NYD schedule is out, and Revolution (Of The Daleks) has a 75-minute slot. Day Of The Doctor is, at 77 minutes, the longest nu-Who episode to date, followed by Capaldi debut Deep Breath at 76. Chibnall could be gunning for bronze here!



(The Five Doctors special in 1983 was 90min, and the Paul McGann Canadian pilot in 1996 was 89min. Moffat's Xmas specials were all 60 minutes, as were RTD's except Voyage Of The Damned at 72, and the NYD Tennant finale part 2 at 75. Moff also went long on Smith's debut The Eleventh Hour, at 65.)

((Chibnall hit 59 and 60 with this year's two-part season openers, and 65 with the Timeless Children finale, in which - lest we forget - the Doctor stood still inside some hula hoops while the Master read a wikipedia entry at her in lieu of anything actually happening.)

I caught up with Orphan 55 and Praxeus (sp?) in a moment of weakness yesterday, and it's weird how they manage to be overlong and underdeveloped at the same time

It says a lot about my connection to the most recent Who season that I keep seeing all of these episode titles and I have to think really, really hard about which stories those actually were

Meanwhile, someone just needs to say some random shit like "Terleptil" and I'm immediately like "Oh yeah, The Visitation was my jam" as if that wasn't 38 years ago

Yeah, I can remember specific camera angles from Trial of a Time Lord, which I haven't seen in... 34 years?