WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

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?

I'm not ruling it out but the Rusty/Barrowman wing (from whence this rumour came) were even more definite about Russell Tovey before so there's a big pinch of salt to be taken.

Michaela Coel is from the same logic as when it was going to be Phoebe Waller-Bridge. IMO you need to stop thinking it's going to be someone on a trendy show or whose career is in the ascendency and instead look to daytime TV or something recently cancelled e.g. Holby City for the next candidate.

Oh yeah it'll probably be that twat with the shirts from HC.

At the risk of being on the receiving end of a sicening, but: weren't Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whittaker both in ascendancy?

And David Tennant...

Matt Smith was pretty unknown. Eccles very well established, hardly daytime/soap level. I guess no one has been as de jour as Coel is now.

I wouldn't say Jodie was in ascendancy as such - she'd spent three years in an admittedly well received by ultimately written by Chinballs show (and all the hype around it was about Tennant and Coleman). I wasn't aware of having actually seen her in anything apart from the Joe Cornish movie Attack The Block when she was cast.

Capaldi was obviously the exception to this but I'd argue outside of TTOI the reaction of most people would be that he was "that guy". I suppose he was in World War Z about the same time and that could be considered his big break in Hollywood (although filming in Glasgow could have helped casting choices...). And of course it was nearly 20 years after he won an Oscar.

I can’t see Olly doing all the extracurricular stuff (and there’s all those orgiastic Y&Y videos to keep the tabs busy worrying about The Children) but I like him as an option. Michaela Coel just picked up a BAFTA so I don’t think she would say yes, but Lydia West might if they keep it female.

Tennant ascendancy way overstated, his big roles going into Who were in Blackpool and starring for Rusty in Casanova.

Ecclestone is an odd one. After Our Friends In The North he just seemed to do the bit parts he wanted until Rusty cast him in The Second Coming and then straight on to Who.

what is everyone talking about

*searches*

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

why is everyone acting like something made up by The Sun is actually real, especially when it has been denied by both Alexander and his agent, and would mean he's taking over in the 60th anniversary year, two years away, if true?

Especially especially when everyone knows it's Kris Marshall.

i very much don’t think it was real i just needed to know The Definitive Sic Take so thank you for that :)

https://media1.giphy.com/media/96wcP8dvzFo5y/giphy.gif

lol

that said the post chibz regime is a matter of when, not if, given the abysmal numbers, and given how long it takes to set wheels in motion and clear diaries, two years from now isn’t that weird of a timeframe to be actively planning imo

that said the post chibz regime is a matter of when, not if

Well, every showrunner's tenure is finite.

given the abysmal numbers

You always say this, but it's been fairly consistently getting around 5-6 million since Capaldi's second season in 2015, and still occasionally scraping into the top ten for the week. If the people who hired him because they think he writes good television are still making the decisions, it seems unlikely they'd see that level of performance as boot-worthy.

(And it's not like he's allowed an obvious successor to shine under his watch, either - whether the disastrously incompetent aspects of McTighe's episodes are down to Chibnall rewrites or not, he's the only showrunner-level freelancer in the Chibnall era.) ((Although his job on the blu-rays might help him look like a reliable pair of hands.))

the AI scores are bad too