WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

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?

You know how the Morbius costume is horrifying because it's so cheap? Like, if it had been a proper expensively-tailored costume it wouldn't have been half so creepy? That's sort of how the writing works now. The scene where Benny (of "BENNY!" fame) dies, offscreen in a really offhanded and confusing way, is so poorly written, it's like a scriptwriting-uncanny valley. It made me feely genuinely uneasy to watch.

The various ways in which the current TARDIS crew is like "oh well that person died, come on we've got a corridor to run down" are legitimately funny to me; it's like every time they get a script, Cole, Gill, and Walshhave a competition to see who can get the most callous take possible on camera

It's so weird and nihilistic even when it's unintentional. I hate it! Having said, that, I just watched The Brain of Morbius for the first time, and lol'd at the end, when Baker and Sladen were like, "ah fuck it, let's just murder solon and get out of here"

I think Davison is the only one who really had a consistent throughline of being really upset about the carnage surrounding him

Now I have Britbox I'm going to catch up on some Davison. I remember watching the Five Doctors, but I must have been... 5 at the time? What are his good ones?

I love Davison to bits so I'd say "All of them"

If forced to choose a smaller selection:

Castrovalva
The Visitation
Kinda/Snakedance
Black Orchid
Earthshock
Mawdryn Undead/Terminus/Enlightenment
The Awakening
Frontios
The Caves of Androzani

Back on Orpahn 55 though, I think it's super hilarious that the Earth has died like 700 times on this show and NOW the Doctor is all "hey, maybe the future can change" because she had a bad spa day

Why would you put a virtual reality holiday complex on a zombie planet - isn't the point of virtual reality that it can be... anywhere? What was the point of the doglady and the Inbetweeners guy? How did Benny get so far out when he wasn't in the tank? Why was Laura Fraser the security guard *and* the hotelier?

Obviously these questions aren't worth asking seriously, but, on the other hand, WHY?????!!!????

Tosin Cole's thumbsucking goodbye with his romantic interest, moments before she kills herself, gets my nod for most memorable/awful image

(Also thanks for the list!)

I loved that the mother/daughter reconciled just so they could immediately throw their lives away

(so powerful)
(so iconic)

Also let me know when you start on Davison, I could talk about those stories all day (and in fact, I'm strongly considering signing up for Britbox myself just to watch them)

I recommend it. Outside of Doctor Who, there's not a ton of good stuff on there, but there's a few amazing shlocky things that are otherwise difficult to find (The Prisoner in HD, Hammer House of Horror, that sort of thing)