WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

1987 followup to teenage Chibnall criticising Who writers Pip & Jane Baker to their faces on Open Air in 1986:

Chris Chibnall reviews Time and the Rani Part 1 😳 pic.twitter.com/zYH96F5V6o

— Joey Morgan (@JoMo___) January 11, 2021

Revolution came in as the tenth most-watched programme of the week, after the New Years live special, A Perfect Planet, The Masked Singer, two episodes of BBC News and four eps of Corrie.

i swear there used to be a post here where sic logistically dismantled chibz' squandering of doctor who's precious christmas day time slot but now i don't see it??

ah found it:

Rolling UK Comedy Thread - "Ricky Don't Lose Larry David's Number

Almost no +28 viewers on Revolution Of The Daleks* - most of Who's catchup is usually frontloaded, but a final figure of 6.6million across screens and devices only added 234k after the first week.

A year ago, Spyfall part 1 got 7.40 million (and ranked #32 on the chart for all channels for the whole year - Dracula's premiere on the same day ranked #23 for the year on 7.93m).

Given the very low AI figure, word of mouth / lack of enthusiasm probably contributed to the short tail. But overall the viewing decline is pretty on par for linear seasonal telly, and it only slipped from #10 for the week to #11 on 28-day figures.



* also still no indication of what their revolution actually is. he really is titling these 100% as not-even-injoke references to stories from 1985.

The Revolution was them turning 180 degrees to try to get back out of the murdered TARDIS.

instead we get john bishop

― koogs, Wednesday, January 13, 2021 11:22 PM (three weeks ago)

“I’ve always got my eye out for performers who are loved, and wondering how good they might be as actors ... John’s somebody I’ve been keeping a beady eye on for years. He’s quietly built up a body of work, through working with people like Jimmy McGovern and Ken Loach, while also doing a dozen other things like stand-up, autobiography, interview shows, podcasts and travel documentaries.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ1qntu2Nzg

"daleks say rels during countdowns, might as well put any odd number in there"

A critical essay: https://them0vieblog.com/2020/03/06/the-unlikely-validation-of-steven-moffats-doctor-who-by-chris-chibnall/

good piece. loved the “timey wimey” bit at the tail. god knows how he found the energy to critically engage with the chibnall era at any length, just burn it all down. i am enthusiastically looking forward to pretending it never happened.

On youtube there's a 5-hour video essay by Jay Exci on the Chibnall era. There's certainly enough bad writing in the era to pick it apart Star Wars prequel style.

That piece sic linked is good, yeah. In retrospect, most infuriating Chibdoc moment: the Doctor saving Shelley because he is a Great Man who will Create Works, the Doctor weaponizing nazi racism or the Amazon is Good, Actually episode?

The terrible terrible revision of the Doctor’s history makes me angry every time I remember it.

It'll hopefully never be mentioned again - I have a nasty feeling that it'll be locked away as something regrettable during that bit when there was a female Doctor and a non-white Master. There must surely be a conspiracy theory somewhere that the powers that be approved Chris Chibnall so that afterwards we can continue with white men in both roles for another 50 years?

Whitaker should share some blame for being lousy in the role. She’s likeable and cosplayable, but, pivotally, not actually good at acting. There are bearable Smith & Tennant episodes with scripts as poor as Chibnall’s. I think that’s a key part of the show’s recent failure — not the continuity wank, which can be improved upon, retconned or glossed over by better writers in the future, if it has one — but Chibnall’s disinterest in performance. The show is essentially just an expensive panto of plot-focussed overacting. But it’s hard to think of a standout performance matched to a standout character — the Pting? Jo Martin’s fine but her comic timing is rotten. Bradley Walsh is the best performer on the show - a lucky accident of charisma.

And when the best you can say about a show is the lucky accident of hiring Bradley Walsh...

I watched a couple of videos from that Jay Exci series, which of course are edited to look as dumb as possible, but still I gotta say I can't imagine Laurence Olivier saving those lines. Whittaker is fine imo.

Bailed after watching half of the second part of the Exci thing tho because while he makes some great points it still felt a like too culture war-y.

I will grit my teeth and sit through this because if I could endure the nonsensical McCoy stories, I can endure this, but it’s extremely difficult to tolerate

McCoy did 12 stories in three years (42 episodes), and 7 of them were in the show’s best 30 stories to date.*

Chibnall has done 21 stories (22 episodes) in six years, and managed to get at least 18 of them into the show’s worst 30 stories to date.** At least the dumbest late-60s base-under-siege serials have Troughton & Jamie adorably clutching each other in terror, & such.

* (Two are quite bad.)
** (Trial Of A Time Lord is a single story.)

Most of the McCoy stories are garbled nonsense that use narrative shortcuts and deus ex machina to resolve the plot. Three of them were very good despite this but most of them are fucking terrible. I liked more of the 6th Doctor's tenure.

The 7th Doctor really only worked in prose.

Here’s how good the 7th Doctor is: Sophie Aldred is a far worse actor than not-an-actor Sylveste McCoy, but 7 & Ace is a top 3 TARDIS team of all time. OF ALL TIME.


y-wimey.

Classic-era teams I would rank above 7/Ace:

4/Leela
5/Tegan/Turlough
4/Sarah Jane(/Harry)
3/Jo
4/Romana I
2/Jamie/Zoe
1/Susan/Barbara/Ian
6/Peri
3/Liz

The only nu-Who team I wouldn't rank above 7/Ace is 10/Rose.

Barbara / Ian / Vicki >>>>>>>>>>> Susan / Barbara / Ian

i think the one thing we can all agree about the McCoy era is that it is Not For Everyone - i know some people love it and i have made multiple good faith attempts to engage with it and can only assume i have some kind of allergy because i find it genuinely unwatchable

Adric/Cybermen is definitely top ten for me

For the McCoy stories, I'd say (bearing in mind I haven't seen some of these since the 80s):

Unequivocally great:
Remembrance of the Daleks
The Happiness Patrol
The melting face in Dragonfire

Great but flawed:
Ghost Light
The Curse of Fenric

Fun:
Paradise Towers
Silver Nemesis
The Greatest Show In the Galaxy
Battlefield
Some parts of Survival
McCoy's bits in the movie

Terrible:
Time And the Rani
Delta And the Bannermen
The other parts of Survival
Everything in Dragonfire that isn't the melting face

That's about right I think. Paradise Towers maybe worthy of promotion to either of the two above it, everything else in 'fun' I could easily put in 'terrible'.

Paradise Towers scared the shit out of me. I was... 9, I think.

Paradise Towers is the most astounding leap in quality from the previous story in all of Who. (Also the first story that Cartmel commissioned.) Every problem with it is down to JNT, but none of them completely obscure how it goes "after-school show for kids? How about a riff on JG Ballard that is explicitly pro-anarchy, anti-masculinity, and says that society is structured for old people to destroy younger people and collective ideas in order to maintain their personal comfort, no matter how unsustainable."

The original score on the DVD, that JNT scrapped in favour of his mate with one keyboard, is an improvement you can apply.

Battlefield fills me with joy every time I watch it, I just adore it

Paradise Towers really shouldn’t work but it absolutely does

btw I remembered Delta & The Bannermen as terrible too, but rewatched abt nine years ago and it's fine. Silly fun that kids can enjoy with gran, a cast having a great time*, a decent spaceship and a few seconds of the very worst alien costume in Who history.

*the first of JNT's budget-stretching shot-on-location stories, which all seem to have created great vibes amongst the workers.

Delta has the best 'should have been a companion', even better than Shirna in Carnival of Monsters. It has lots of ideas but none of them really land well.

I actually rewatched Paradise Towers last week (despite it being on the next blu box) and finally spotted that Pex actually does save Mel from the Ressies the first time, just nobody realises because the plot hasn't got there yet.

Paradise Towers scared the shit out of me. I was... 9, I think.

― Chuck_Tatum

Yeah, same. I was obsessed with it when it was being serialised, drawing collages of the characters etc. Rewatched it maybe ten years ago and the tone was... not quite as sinister as I remembered.

TS: Shona vs Shirna

the tone was... not quite as sinister as I remembered

I need to rewatch the scene with the two old cannibal ladies, who end up being (iirc) pulled through a kitchen garbage disposal... that's the image that's stuck with me, whether or not I'm remembering it right.

I recall a weird combination of campiness and mean-spiritedness about this story - like an accidental League of Gentleman episode. It's not exactly scary, just unsettling -- perhaps there's something about the uncanny and the unsettling that's difficult for children to process, because it's not just a big obvious monster.

Although, of course, there's also this:

https://magazineclonerepub.blob.core.windows.net/mcepub/2912/146268/image/7e74c252-22ea-4021-a31b-2c2ce42303a2.jpg

I found the cleaners genuinely fucking scary at the time. Their inhuman relentlessness and lack of reason, same appeal as the Daleks I suppose. And if you were out in the corridors they could get you AT ANY TIME.

Yes, they had a "if you see one, you're fucked" vibe, that even the Daleks didn't have

God, I almost feel like talking to my therapist about this episode

Mark Ayres, fresh from delivering 40 hours of revised and remastered and 5.1 mixed audio for the S24 box set, on Delta:

But still a lot of bonkers fun. And a bit more sensical in the extended cut.

He also says he wanted to use some David Snell cues in the extended Paradise Towers, but they were too incongruous alongside Keff.

However, you will find that Keff's music is used rather differently in places on the extended cuts. And works much better (IMHO). It's nice that these alternative edits give one a chance to have a play.

Paradise Towers now has its own spin-off comic, because nothing ever ends
https://merchandise.thedoctorwhosite.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/pt-all.jpg

are the extended versions of the McCoy serials available for streaming anywhere? britbox just has the original dvd/broadcast versions. I really want to see these but don't feel like buying a bluray for something I'm going to watch once.

Well, some of the DVDs had extended versions too. But the budget for making new extended versions is created by selling them, so putting them up for streaming before the blu-rays even exist would make the extended versions also not exist. In a timey-wimey fashion.

Meanwhile

The extras list on the forthcoming Season 24 set is MASSIVE. The extras on other sets have taken up two columns. Time and the Rani Disc 1 alone has three! Click on some of those, such as 'TV Promotions & Appearances' and you'll get a second double-column menu of stuff pop up. pic.twitter.com/TdEcK4HMQ7

— Richard Bignell (@NothingLane) June 5, 2021

Studio Video cameras could be so unforgiving. I love this shot of McCoy from Dragonfire (I forget the photographers name but recall you used to be able to buy prints..?) as it makes the set look so atmospheric.[Dragonfire] pic.twitter.com/lVkOmIiOFu

— Lit Roundels (@LRoundels) June 12, 2021

With this degree of connection between intent and result, is Chibnall writing the social media now too?

Make sure you grab a photo with your fam 🥰 #NationalSelfieDay pic.twitter.com/MPWFaNpv0I

— Doctor Who (@bbcdoctorwho) June 21, 2021

olly alexander? i assume this means the next showrunner is lined up?

is Chib Null def leaving? god what a dud hire, worst senior creative figure in the show’s history

Not sure Alexander is definite yet. Hope not, I'd much prefer Michaela Coel.

Kinda yeah but also kinda would prefer Michaela Coel to be free to do her own projects?