Sea Devils And Die: GeroniMoffat's Doctor Who In The 2010s

a large chunk of the Donna year was great (esp "Turn Left")

also loved "The Waters of Mars"

Tennant/Tate is the best combo ever imo. Also, Turn Left and Water of Mars great, yes, totally (and that one in the plane), but on the whole the stories in the Tate year were meh

imo

i liked the adipose story, and the ood.

the Ood are the most useless Who alien ever, and the adipose story is perhaps the stupidest in the history of the show

I wouldn't have minded it if RTD had ever remembered a single number that he gave out in the course of it though

yeah the ood seem to have become the de facto "we've run out of budget for a new alien" alien

I like the ood. You crotchety oldschool Whovians really do hate fun, dont ya :)

their ENTIRE ANATOMY MAKES NO SENSE

love how distractedly non-arsed Smith's "another Ood I failed to save" musing was.

I don't mind oods but they don't do anything anymore.

It's basically just a person in fright mask with a light globe, the sort of thing they did on Star Trek to save money on props.

I quite like the Ood, too. And 'Turn Left' was great."Itsa fun!"

with a light globe that makes one of their arms completely unusable

The episode at the mine with the Ood & Percy from Blackadder was cool...I liked the arc they had with Donna & Tennant. And I like their lamp-pipes.

The episode at the mine

this is where i stopped reading

(doctor who + mines = terminal boredom)

do you get tired of hating everything in life y/n

y

in fact i hate it

then again it's good to have a skill

I'm not going to get sucked into RTD bashing again, but anybody who doesn't think the Donna season was a huge improvement over the Martha season is tripping balls.

OTM

Think tennant had a good run and then went a bit stale. There should always be room for fresh blood and new ideas. Roughly how many series can one person sustain until it gets a bit tired? I'm thinking 3?

TOM BAKER

I meant writing rather than acting, and to be fair the last few series of the Baker reign were dodgy as hell.

Key of Time? City of Death??

I'm not going to get sucked into RTD bashing again, but anybody who doesn't think the Donna season was a huge improvement over the Martha season is tripping balls.

Yeah that's true, the final two-parter of the Martha season is the worst shit ever especially tiny Yoda Doctor, and the Master dancing to the Bodyrockers or whatever.

But that series still had Blink and the Cornell two-parter in the 1915 public school and for that I'll happily defend at least some of it.

will rep for Utopia and The Sound Of Drums (mainly due to Jacobi and Simm)...it only turns to shit in the actual finale. Martha and Donna annoyed me equally.

Yeah--RTD could usually set up a good 2-part finale, he just usually couldn't resolve them.

But that series still had Blink and the Cornell two-parter in the 1915 public school and for that I'll happily defend at least some of it.

Ooh yeah, a couple of the best--though not RTD-written

I, er, thought the Shakespeare Code was pretty good too -- and Gridlock, one of RTD's better 2000AD style concepts, like The Long Game.

The worst shit ever in nu-Who happened in season 2 ("Fear Her", "The Idiot Lantern")

"Victory of the Daleks" came very close to being as terrible as those two tho

otm

i really hated voyage of the damned, and the doctor's daughter episode as well, but otherwise djp otm

The Doctor's Daughter is the actual worst Nu-Who episode, that or the one in the 50s where the Doctor climbs up the TV tower.

nu who exists in this great sweet spot between overt campiness and incredible sincerity. i'm totally okay with it veering in the camp direction, but when it goes (badly) for heart-rending emotion, it's kind of excruciating. that's how most genre stuff is, i guess, but it seems extra pronounced in this show. the extra bad episodes, where we're supposed to believe in BIG STAKES and UNIVERSAL DANGER and LOVE and SACRIFICE or whatever always come off, to me, as clunky and sort of autistic. there are exceptions, of course (blink, the first jack harkness episodes) but for my tastes, the show is most successful when it does the least, when it milks a bizarre premise, mystery, or phobia for all it's worth and enlivens it with a little humor or action.

the one in the 50s where the Doctor climbs up the TV tower.

This is "The Idiot Lantern"

There are only three episodes that made me question whether I was going to continue watching the show; that is my metric for "bad".

sometimes the LOVE and SACRIFICE stuff is amazing, like in "Amy's Choice"

Moffatt (and Cornell) are so much better than the rest at doing emotional/relationship stuff it isn't funny. Early standard for that = Father's Day.

agreed. i also loved the episode with the doctor stuck on the train-car thing with the echoy monster, and found it genuinely unsettling.

Midnight? I reckon that was the best episode Rusty wrote.

tbh I am not as impressed with Cornell's story because I read it 16 years ago when it was a novel, so I pretty much knew exactly what was going to happen (the changes made to accommodate Martha as a black woman in that time period as opposed to Benny, the original white female companion from the story, were really good though)

i also loved the episode with the doctor stuck on the train-car thing with the echoy monster, and found it genuinely unsettling.

"Midnight"! This was bad-ass.

Rusty deserves a decent amount of scorn but when he reigned in his worst impulses he could be great; I was ready to write off S2 because I'd only seen "The Idiot's Lantern" but "Love and Monsters" drew me back in.

Lots of my favourite nu-Whos being mentioned above. It's a real shame Paul Cornell hasn't written anything since S3: Father's Day and Human Nature/The Family of Blood are among the very best, I think.

Outside of Moffatt and Cornell, I think Midnight, Dalek and Love And Monsters have been my favourites. Oh, and Rose too, just because it gave me a warm glow.

It's funny how when it comes to all this, we talk all about the writers and never about the directors. Total opposite of what happens with cinema, generally.

I had a pet theory that Euros Lyn was a bad director, but he did the great dream sequences in Silence In The Library/Forest Of The Dead, so maybe not.

soooo much otm overnight, especially this:

i really hated voyage of the damned, and the doctor's daughter episode as well, but otherwise djp otm

― remy bean, Thursday, 2 June 2011 22:29 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Voyage of the Damned is possible the worst hour of television I have ever seen

I was going to stick up for "Voyage of the Damned" and then I remembered Bannakaffalatta

Yes, who was clearly not AGENDAR.

In much better news though, ANIMATED REIGN OF TERROR.

might've told this story before, but my sister got me "the writer's tale" RTD book for some past xmas, and altho i'm generally one to defend RTD, it really soured me on him. case in point, he whipped up the script for voyage of the damned in a mad frantic rush three weeks late and declared it was proof of his successful seat-of-your-pants writing method. no, it was slap-dash half-thought-out shit, similar to journey's end. and then presumably the season of specials was supposed to give him more time to work, and yet it resulted in the dreadful tennant-finale and whatever that michelle ryan tripe was.

but i'll stand up for the adipose episode because donna and ten were so awesome together. i have a chip on my shoulder about the supposed greatness of silence in the library/forest of the damned because the doctor and donna were separated for most of it.

But their separation had real dramatic point, and gave you great insight into Donna's strengths and desires

But yeah, Voyage of the Damned was the worst, and that's not even considering the Kylie Miniogue factor. I loathe Kyle Minogue.

I recently picked up Century Falls cheap on DVD, which I had vague memories of as a kid. Early Rusty kids TV show and really fucking good. Creepy as hell and full of awkward, alienated youths. It's a shame he didn't write more stuff like that for Dr Who, although you can see certain tropes emerging. Interestingly, the show has a kids dying theme, which is something Moffat has worked much more than RTD. Although RTD did bring that to the forefront of the Torchwood special. Best of all, it has little of the sentimentality he brought to Who, and he is clearly working out his queer fat kid neuroses through the lead. The denoument is a bit deus ex, but it's a fantasy, not proper SF, so it works in the context. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that in there.