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  • Locked thread
Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
Doctor Who would never make it anywhere near a favourite shows list of mine but that doesn't seem to stop me from getting in an excessive amount of arguments about it

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MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




Doctor Who and Star Trek are the same in that there's at best a 50:50 chance any given episode will be total poo poo, but it's worth it for the highs.

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

E PLURIBUS ANUS posted:

Doctor who fans describe their relationship with doctor who the same way battered housewives describe their relationship with their abusive husbands

This poo poo is fuckin weird, I was expectin a bunch of "THIS SHOW RULES gently caress YOU OCC" and instead it's "yeah doctor who sucks a lot/mostly but once you get to know him he's a really lovely guy. I got this bruise from walking into a cabinet, it's bigger on the inside...:smith:"

It's been running for 50 years, ain't nobody that can like all of it.

Some of it is apologetically cheesy in a James Bond way (the Pertwee era) and the Tom Baker years have a lot of interesting tributes on the horror genre, as well as some tongue-in-cheek stuff written by Douglas Adams. The RTD years are a lot friendlier to women and the LBGT community, but Moffat is sometimes a better storyteller and at least in his first season he tends to avoid stuff like burping dustbins, but he is an unapologetic misogynist. Like all genre fiction, it varies greatly in the ways in which it deals with its tropes (and in Who's case, its own long history) with anything from dread seriousness to full-on parody. There are years where it cares too much about its own continuity and years where it winks a little too much at its own audience and gets masturbatory. You kind of have to judge each episode on its own merits.

I started with Rose and didn't care for it much, but there are some very good episodes in the first season, in my opinion. I also have to give Russell T. Davies credit for successfully reviving a show that had been off the air for decades, making it an international phenomenon and also spawning three spin-off programs, two of which were fairly big successes on their own for years. Clearly he latched onto something that was in the public consciousness at the time.

Your OP seems to indicate that you don't like genre fiction in general, which means, to be honest, that you will never like Doctor Who, because it is very, very much a genre story.

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

E PLURIBUS ANUS posted:

Doctor who fans describe their relationship with doctor who the same way battered housewives describe their relationship with their abusive husbands

This poo poo is fuckin weird, I was expectin a bunch of "THIS SHOW RULES gently caress YOU OCC" and instead it's "yeah doctor who sucks a lot/mostly but once you get to know him he's a really lovely guy. I got this bruise from walking into a cabinet, it's bigger on the inside...:smith:"

Bicylops covered most of it better than I could, but he didn't leave the other thing.

If you ever meet a fan of Doctor Who who has nothing bad to say about any of it, run the gently caress away. You are not dealing with a normal person, and I highly doubt you are even dealing with a fan.

I loving love the show, but that doesn't mean I love everything about it. Honestly, to me, the last few years have been dreadful-I'm mostly hanging on because I know the show can be better, and it deserves to be better. There's always a glimmer of hope, as well, that's almost impossible to snuff out.

I think I have more bad things to say about the last three years of Who than I do good things. But, eh, as many have said before- there are no bad Doctors, only bad writers.

aperion
May 15, 2007

i want to believe
Grimey Drawer

E PLURIBUS ANUS posted:

Doctor who fans describe their relationship with doctor who the same way battered housewives describe their relationship with their abusive husbands

This poo poo is fuckin weird, I was expectin a bunch of "THIS SHOW RULES gently caress YOU OCC" and instead it's "yeah doctor who sucks a lot/mostly but once you get to know him he's a really lovely guy. I got this bruise from walking into a cabinet, it's bigger on the inside...:smith:"

Well, yeah. Doctor Who is a goofy-rear end show that's horribly inconsistent with writing and production. If you were doing this to Star Trek, you'd probably get a lot more of the "gently caress YOU I LOVE THIS SHOW" crowd because it does take itself so seriously on every level.

HD DAD
Jan 13, 2010

Generic white guy.

Toilet Rascal
Doctor Who is campy, pulpy fun, and goddammit I like fun. Yes, there's tons of fans who are defensive and awful about it, but every show has that. It's got warts, but it's charming nonetheless.

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
Since you all seem so stoked about this, expect another Occupation post shortly. Here is a preview of our intellectual, measured discussion on the episode:

quote:

Oxxidation: hahahahahahahaahaha
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA
I AM GOING TO DRAG YOU ALONG ON THIS RIDE UNTIL ALL THAT REMAINS IS BONE

Occupation: You're a bad frend
friend
but hey this got us to listen to Tainted Love
gently caress I FORGOT THIS HAD TOXIC
gently caress YOU
gently caress YOU
gently caress YOU
EAT A DICK

Oxxidation: AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA

I dunno, I think he'll be charitable with it.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




I actually liked the use of Toxic in End of the World. :silent:

NieR Occomata
Jan 18, 2009

Glory to Mankind.

Doctor Who
"The End of the World"
Series 1, Episode 2

The Doctor: "You lot spend all your time thinkin' about dying...like you're gonna get killed by eggs or beef or global warming or asteroids. But you never take time to imagine the impossible...that maybe you'll survive."

This episode is all the more tedious and awful because of how strong it starts. The cold open, capped by the above monologue, is a rare confluence of writing and acting on this pitiful excuse for a television program, where a genuinely well-written section of dialog is improved by Eccleston's flat-out wondrous acting to illustrate the Doctor's haunted sense of cynicism and genuine pathos. There's deep pain in the Doctor's recent history, and for once this show goes the subtle route and allows the subtext to dominate the scene, as the Doctor is able to imply his pain while contextualizing it via an event that Rose would have an emotional connection to-the titular end of the world. It's a neat trick that Doctor Who pulls, and quite frankly an intelligent one.

Then the rest of the episode happens, unfortunately, and pisses all over the rare goodwill this show has built with me.

The theme of this episode is "Endings". The Doctor and Rose travel far, far into the future, landing on a spaceship that's essentially a viewing station for our sun's explosion, causing the final destruction of that little blue-green planet we call Earth. As it happens, the event has essentially been turned into a high-priced tourist attraction, as representatives from various alien colonies all arrive on the ship to take part in the proceedings.

It's at this point that the episode completely falls apart. Before, in the cold open, which begins literally seconds after the pilot ends, we finally see some slight character definition from Rose and the Doctor- the Doctor messing around and trying a bit too hard, but endearingly so, to impress his companion, who finally expresses an emotion besides confusion as Rose finally starts to settle in and enjoy the whole proceeding. This, too, leads to the duo standing next to each other in a viewing room, Rose gazing down and contemplating the enormousness of the fact that her planet will be no more, as the Doctor stands next to her in uneasy silence, contemplating his recent brush with genocide and destruction which he oh-so-desperately wants to escape. There's layers of unspoken weight and meaning to both Rose and the Doctor's sudden existentialism and pathos, and I so wish the show has just focused on that to the exclusion of all else.

Instead what we get is a predictable and stupid action-adventure plot involving one of the alien visitors sneaking aboard a legion of killbots to fake a hostage situation so they can make a ton of money or something, it's so goddamn convoluted and idiotic and ultimately pointless. Rose gets put in imminent danger, again. The Doctor Sonic Screwdrivers stuff, again. There's laughably, ridiculously bad CGI, again. None of it matters as The Doctor saves the day at the last possible moment and ties a neat bow on everything, except for the Totally-Not-a-Black-Person-Analog "tree" lady who heroically sacrifices herself to save the ship.

The problem with this mess of a plot is that it doesn't have any real stakes. The episode immediately sets to splitting up Rose and the Doctor from the outset, as the Doctor immediately heads off on a Hardy Boy-esque adventure with the potential love interest tree lady, Jabe. In comparison, Rose spends most of her time either by herself, talking to one of the densely uninteresting alien visitors, or unconscious. It's a real shafting of screentime as Rose is forced to interact with these one-note, dull "aliens" (aka humans in bad face makeup or super fake plastic props) about nothing whilst the Doctor and Jabe flirt up a storm in the maintenance tunnels. Sure, there's mention of a threat of something being quote-on-quote "wrong" with the computers/shielding system of the viewing station, which is why Jabe and the Doctor are poking around in the first place, but it's treated with the carefree air that one would treat, say, their apartment's Wifi being down. It's all so meandering, as even when the show tries to establish the robot antagonists (who are, essentially, robot spiders) as a real and immediate threat to the safety of everyone onboard, immediately pulls the narrative rug from out under the audience so we can watch Rose talking to a loving plumber or something.

It's especially infuriating because the interplay between Jabe and the Doctor is narratively weighty. We as the audience finally learn that the Doctor is a Time Lord, and the last of his race, two seemingly major revelations that Rose is completely absent for. Rose has essentially been demoted to a sidekick's sidekick this episode, so instead of building up the relationship between the starring duo we watch as Rose bangs on doors ineffectually.

If the stuff Rose was doing throughout the episode was decent, the episode would've been saved- we could've established Rose as her own character, a distinct individual sans the influence of the Doctor. Unfortunately, the exact opposite of this happens, as Rose spends a majority of her time alone, when she's interacting with anyone, talking to Cassandra O'Brien, the by-far worst character of this episode.

I think I get what the episode was trying to go for- in trying to keep to the theme of "endings", Cassandra is the, quote, "last human in existence". Unfortunately, Cassandra is now so obsessed with staying young and alive that she's removed all traces of humanity via her many various plastic surgery procedures, and is now essentially as tarp with a face. The symbolism is as subtle as a hammer -she's the "last" pure human, but in reality she's the least human of all! Don't you get it? Don't you, Doctor Who fans?

In case you didn't, the analogy is beat even further into the dirt as Cassandra snidely reveals that the human race hasn't really "ended", it just ended up intermingling with the various other alien races. But, see, Cassandra is the last pure human, see. Racial purity symbolism ahoy!

It's all so crass and obvious that it almost justifies the way that Rose interacts with her, calling her, among other names, a "human trampoline". But in practice it just makes Rose seem petulant and kind of petty, when instead of devoting her time to doing literally anything else Rose is devoting her time to crafting sick burns on a racist, superficial moron.

The show really goes out of its way to make Cassandra the absolute worst being in existence, so as to make her all the more hateable when it reveals the robot infestation plot was, shock of shocks, part of her aforementioned extremely convoluted falsified hostage scheme. (She wants to kill everyone on board to pay for more plastic surgery! What a superficial bitch, guys!) The episode goes overboard, however, and makes Cassandra into a cartoon, and therefore lessens any dramatic impact the final reveal brings because, well, of course Cassandra did it, she's the only awful being the Doctor and Rose interacted with.

There's just so much about this episode that's unsubtle. There's a loving inexplicable scene in the middle of the episode where Rose calls home to her Mom that seems to exist purely to eat up screentime as it has zero connection with the plot whatsoever. The scene's so melodramatic and corny that it borders on the laughable as Rose, with zero sense of irony, intones: "That was five billion years ago. So, she's dead now. Five billion years later, my mum's dead." It's just loving embarrassing.

The episode is just loud and obnoxious on all fronts- all the aliens are gimmicks, the score is absolutely overbearing (I really, really cannot stand the score of this show as it's absolutely generic, with the sound mixing tuned so high that is sometimes drowns out the dialog), the special effects are both utterly fake and placed front and center- in specific, there's a scene near the end with the Doctor navigating huge, fake CGI fans that loops from "so bad it's good" to "so bad it's terrible".

This episode is just melodramatic for the sake of being melodramatic- every single "emotional" scene lasts three beats too long, especially near the end as every single shot is focused on for seconds on end, forcing the tension to the point where it becomes nakedly manipulative. Nothing works and by the end I was begging for the Doctor to save everything and everyone just to make the scene loving end, Christ.

It's all the more of a shame, because the episode is essentially a hammock- the final beat of the episode, with the Doctor revealing to Rose who he is and why he's the only Time Lord left was a very nice, somewhat understated sequence. It's scenes like the very beginning and the very end of the episode that illustrate what kind of show Doctor Who can be- an understated, somewhat emotional exploration into the minds of the main characters and their own sense of place and meaning in the incomprehensibly infinite vastness of the universe. Instead what we get is a bunch of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Grade: F

Random Thoughts:
  • "Tainted Love" is a pretty great loving song.
  • Oh yeah- gently caress THE GODDAMN MONTAGE SET TO "TOXIC" gently caress. UGH. gently caress YOU RUSSELL T. DAVIES
  • I really think this episode would've been much better if it was essentially a bottle episode about the Doctor and Rose observing the slow destruction of Earth in their viewing chamber, with zero aliens and "the station might be destroyed" subplot, since it had zero stakes. If instead, the episode was just about Rose and the Doctor relating to each other and allowing character tributes to flow organically from their conversations over an event that has symbolic significance to both of them (like we get hints of in the cold open), it would've been a great episode. Instead we just get a bunch of loud, obnoxious yelling.
  • Rose (to plant): "Oh, hello. My name's Rose, that's a sort of plant. We might be related." (Rose is a goddamn idiot who doesn't know how plants work)
  • Rose: "You think you're so impressive." Doctor: "I AM so impressive!"

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?
The call to Rose's mom pays off, to a degree, in a later episode - but I have a feeling you won't be charitable to other parts of that same episode, so whatever.

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
Doctor Who
"The End of the World"
Series 1, Episode 2

The first three episodes of Series 1 can be considered a primer, of sorts. Doctor Who is all about time travel bullshit, of course, second only to our lord and savior Homestuck, and while the first episode took place in the present, this one goes waaaay into the future, and showcases what most "futuristic" episodes can be expected to contain - mostly dire special effects and a higher-than-usual alien quota. We also get our first proper look at how the TARDIS functions, which is, to wit, like someone tried to turn an entire junkyard into a jalopy. The Doctor randomly squeaking, twisting, and pumping various thingamabobs on the ramshackle machine is a common sight throughout the series and it's fun and it's cute and it's charming so there.

Leaping ahead from the present day to the badly-CG'd end of our little blue Earth initially seems at once lazy and over-ambitious, a super-obvious way for the Doctor to blow his time-machine load (even with a time machine, you only get one chance to make a first impression). But it's also a nicely pat way to sum up the Doctor's perspective as a time traveler - just because everything has a beginning and an ending doesn't mean that all the little bits in between stop being important. A more cynical soul would see the planet they'd spent the last several eons trying to save repeatedly turned into a burning museum piece at the end and go "welp, the last 4000 years were a complete waste of time, wonder what's on telly," but the Doctor's optimistically blase attitude towards the whole proceeding does a nice job of summarizing how he feels about the work he's done, without needing to make a whole bunch of speeches about it. We get a whole bunch of speeches anyway, but it's the thought that counts.

Rose, meanwhile, is completely out of her depth, puttering around the ship and trying to bridge the gap between "the end of all things" and "the end of my mum" with mixed success. The Doctor science'ing up her cell phone is among the better scenes in the episode, giving the actors a chance to actually act instead of breathlessly run around corridors, but it also shows that Rose is not cut out for this time-travel business in the way that he is - Rose needs some fixed point to focus on, namely her mother, but the Doctor's got no one, which we see him reluctantly admit for the first (but MOST CERTAINLY NOT THE LAST) time. What he loves is "humanity" in general, although since the last "human" is a malevolent quilt square it does raise some questions as to what he considers human after millennia of our species doing the horizontal bop with creatures who see in five dimensions - questions which, we must conclude, only fanfiction dares to answer.

The actual plot of this episode is a ridiculous mess and higher on camp than a Scoutmaster Axl Rose. We see blue midgets spitting on people, badly makeup'd tree-women, a giant latex head in a jar, and Cassandra, the aforementioned quilt-woman. Cassandra's acting is delightfully hammy and the special effects on her, while still PSX-era cheap, still make her look pretty darn grotesque. The fact that Occ was so repelled by it bodes ill for him, but that's why you're all here, so everyone except him wins. That said, Rose's final look at the burning Earth, tearfully saying that no one even saw its last moments, was genuinely touching and probably the closest Billie Piper comes to good acting since her introduction. The Doctor brings the theme of the episode home by taking her back to present-day Earth, showing that while things die, nothing ever really ends.

You heard that, Occ? We've got like 150 hours of this thing to go, and even in the event that you finish them all, there'll be another 150 by the time you're done. There was a valuable lesson here for you and you missed it. Say it with me now: the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the

Regy Rusty
Apr 26, 2010

This episode has the Face of Boe in it therefore it is a good episode IMO.

Dirt
May 26, 2003

I love this thread, and I really can't wait for the write up on Aliens of London/World War 3. Easily the worst episodes of New Doctor Who ever, and probably right up there in the whole 50 years of stories.


Every time I watch Series 1 I feel sorta sad that Christopher Eccleston got handed so many garbage scripts for his short run. I really liked him as the Doctor, but I can honestly only stand to watch about 4 or 5 of his episodes.

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

Dirt posted:

I love this thread, and I really can't wait for the write up on Aliens of London/World War 3. Easily the worst episodes of New Doctor Who ever, and probably right up there in the whole 50 years of stories.


Every time I watch Series 1 I feel sorta sad that Christopher Eccleston got handed so many garbage scripts for his short run. I really liked him as the Doctor, but I can honestly only stand to watch about 4 or 5 of his episodes.

The next episode coming up is way worse than Aliens of World War 3, if only for how disgustingly xenophobic it is. For all of AoL/WW3's faults (and it has plenty) it also has some decent-to-great scenes and sets up one of my favorite episodes later in the season.

Android Blues
Nov 22, 2008

Cassandra is so bad as a character and honestly reads as faintly misogynist to me. Women being ill-served by the writing is a running theme in Doctor Who, in general, even outside of Moffat's stuff.

Recursive
Jul 15, 2006

... but then again, who does?

hcreight posted:

Not gonna lie. I already 5'd this thread. :allears:

It's this right here. This thread is gonna be awesome.

Doctor Who was my favorite SF show as a kid. I mean, I liked Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, but I loving loved Doctor Who. I grew up watching VHS's of Baker and Davison and then got more into Pertwee and Troughton and Hartnell. I watched a bit of Baker the second, and one or two of McCoy, but the writing went off the rails.

Holy poo poo, I could not watch Eccleston at all. Occ hits it right on the head. Rose is awful. The tardis is stupid. The show is cookie cutter mid-budget BBC SF. The score is almost offensively bland. Rose and Micky are awful. Knowing how the Rose and Micky thing ends up is awful. Rose's mom is a portrait of "British actor phoning it in", and she out-acts the poo poo out of everyone except Eccleston.

The second episode is almost worse. Almost, but not quite. The first three of the new episodes put me way the gently caress off of the new stuff. How the hell do you make a show using plastic robot heads/bodies and crappy chroma key effects shot thirty-five years ago look leagues better than you? Robots of Death and Genesis of the Daleks are so much better than anything in this iteration, I can't even tell you*.

Now get the gently caress off of my lawn.

*I actually liked Day of the Doctor. John Hurt was one hell of a Doctor.

Recursive fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Jul 31, 2014

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
This is a bit late, but I will say- Spearhead from Space had the best Auton appearance, I think. They were also the creepiest looking of the bunch- how much of that was on purpose and how much was just how low the budget was, is up for grabs.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




I always thought of End of the World as one of my favourite episodes, but thinking back that was entirely because of the Rose/Doctor bits at the start and the end. The middle was irrelevant bollocks by comparison. The bookends are Who and the Ninth Doctor at their finest.

One Swell Foop
Aug 5, 2010

I'm afraid we have no time for codes and manners.

DoctorWhat posted:

The next episode coming up is way worse than Aliens of World War 3, if only for how disgustingly xenophobic it is. For all of AoL/WW3's faults (and it has plenty) it also has some decent-to-great scenes and sets up one of my favorite episodes later in the season.
Aliens/WW3 has good bits for fans, but also some pretty unforgivably dire stuff in it though. I suspect the alphabet won't go deep enough to express EPA's unhappiness. There's a good reason the director was never allowed near the franchise again. And apparently hasn't been given anything of note since, according to Wikipedia.

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

One Swell Foop posted:

Aliens/WW3 has good bits for fans, but also some pretty unforgivably dire stuff in it though. I suspect the alphabet won't go deep enough to express EPA's unhappiness. There's a good reason the director was never allowed near the franchise again. And apparently hasn't done anything of note since, according to Wikipedia.

Well, there's lots of reasons Keith Boak wasn't invited back, including, apparently, a row with Eccleston over what Eccleston perceived as lovely treatment of production crew. He also directed Rose and was apparently responsible for the burping-wheelie-bin poo poo and other childish bits.

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


Two things:

  • Why are all the Time Lords dead? What does that achieve? The Doctor was already an outcast who could never go home, making them dead doesn't seem to gain you anything. In fact, it just adds an arbitrary restriction that you can never do stories involving other Time Lords without coming up with some bullshit explanation for how they managed to survive.

  • The new TARDIS interior is just incredibly dumb.

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

Tiggum posted:

Two things:

  • Why are all the Time Lords dead? What does that achieve? The Doctor was already an outcast who could never go home, making them dead doesn't seem to gain you anything. In fact, it just adds an arbitrary restriction that you can never do stories involving other Time Lords without coming up with some bullshit explanation for how they managed to survive.

  • The new TARDIS interior is just incredibly dumb.

Stories with the Time Lords in the Classic Series and "wilderness years" were becoming increasingly dull - plus, with the Time Lords still around, the kind of universe-threatening stakes needed for season finales would be hampered with explanations of why the Doctor doesn't just go to the Time Lords for help.

Plus, pathos.

And "Coral" isn't that bad, though the interior from the 1996 TV Movie is clearly the best.

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


DoctorWhat posted:

the kind of universe-threatening stakes needed for season finales

Needed? :crossarms:

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

From a dramatic standpoint, yeah, usually. For mainstream TV, certainly. My favorite "Season finale" story is the audio adventure A Death in the Family, but that's two hours of almost raw dialogue about a bad guy made out of language, and that doesn't translate well to TV screens.

Basically, active Time Lords limit the stakes. They limit the program. And it's not like the Time War was a wholly original idea - the series had flirted with destroying Gallifrey as far back as the unmade Season 23 story "Gallifray"(sic), and numerous flirtations with it during the Wilderness Years.

Roach Warehouse
Nov 1, 2010


These episodes were originally broadcast when I was in my early teens. Prior to that, the national broadcaster had replayed most of the classic series every weeknight at 6pm. While that was pretty impossible to pay attention to for its several year run, I was really hyped for the revival.

I enjoyed it at the time, but as the years have gone on I've become less interested in the show, and in hindsight some of the stuff I enjoyed is pretty dreary, that said there are moments in these early seasons that I really enjoy, if only for nostalgia's sake now.

In short, I fived and subscribed. Keep it up.

Spatula City
Oct 21, 2010

LET ME EXPLAIN TO YOU WHY YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING
This is so exciting. :allears:

Occupation is going to HATE Aliens of London/WWIII. Hmmmm, looking at Eccleston's run, there's only really 3 great episodes.
Also this thread won't REALLY pick up until we get to The Christmas Invasion. hahahahahahaha
:getin:

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




Spatula City posted:

Hmmmm, looking at Eccleston's run, there's only really 3 great episodes.

What're you thinking? Dalek, Father's Day, and the Empty Child two-parter?

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

MikeJF posted:

What're you thinking? Dalek, Father's Day, and the Empty Child two-parter?

I've got a very soft spot for Boom Town, myself - I think Occupation will enjoy that one, to be honest. The Empty Child is, of course, a classic too. And while Dalek isn't as good as Jubilee, the audio adventure it's inspired by (by the same author, Rob Shearman, my favorite Who writer, and someone I've had the pleasure of hanging out with over coffee at the National Theatre in London), it's also fantastic.

Honestly, the only episodes from S1 I really dislike are The Unquiet Dead and about half of Aliens of London/World War 3.

Tiggum
Oct 24, 2007

Your life and your quest end here.


DoctorWhat posted:

From a dramatic standpoint, yeah, usually.
I disagree. Big dramatic high-stakes season finales are almost universally awful.

DoctorWhat posted:

Basically, active Time Lords limit the stakes. They limit the program.
Even if you want high stakes, it doesn't have to be the universe. The Earth is generally considered pretty high stakes, and Time Lords never bothered saving individual planets. The Earth was conquered by Daleks one time and they didn't step in then. There were also several stories in the original run where the universe was at stake despite the existence of Time Lords. One of their major characteristics is that they generally don't take direct action but prefer plausible deniability and influencing things through outside agents, which is why the Doctor ends up consistently arriving in places where his help is needed despite having virtually no control over where he goes.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




Tiggum posted:

I disagree. Big dramatic high-stakes season finales are almost universally awful.

I dunno, my favourite Doctor Who modern finale blew up the universe.

MrL_JaKiri
Sep 23, 2003

A bracing glass of carrot juice!

MikeJF posted:

I dunno, my favourite Doctor Who modern finale blew up the universe.

As they're pretty universally terrible this is a high bar indeed

Dirt posted:

I love this thread, and I really can't wait for the write up on Aliens of London/World War 3. Easily the worst episodes of New Doctor Who ever, and probably right up there in the whole 50 years of stories.

They're really not. There's a lot of window dressing which is really stupid and horrible and pointless but the core ideas are some of the best of the revival. First watch through it'll be the worst thing you've ever seen, second watch (if you can get past that) it's actually really good in ways you justifiably overlook the first time round.

MikeJF
Dec 20, 2003




I'm really curious how Midnight is going to go down now.

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

MrL_JaKiri posted:

They're really not. There's a lot of window dressing which is really stupid and horrible and pointless but the core ideas are some of the best of the revival. First watch through it'll be the worst thing you've ever seen, second watch (if you can get past that) it's actually really good in ways you justifiably overlook the first time round.

Again, we can safely blame Keith Boak for everything bad in Modern Who because he probably made Chris quit, thereby causing a chain of cascade failures leading to the disasters of series 2 and all that jazz. Like the Master in Logopolis blowing up 3/4s of the universe/galaxy (depending on whether you believe Rob Holmes or Lance Parkin).

angerbot
Mar 23, 2004

plob
Looking forward to Fear Her

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

angerbot posted:

Looking forward to Fear Her

I have a soft spot for most of Fear Her because, unlike a certain other episode that season, it manages not to promote the idea that abuse victims need to "reconcile" with their abusers. On the other hand (hahahah, that's gonna be dreadful), the entire Olympics subplot is disgusting both aesthetically and (especially after the police-states on which recent Olympics have been predicated) morally repugnant.

Jerusalem
May 20, 2004

Would you be my new best friends?

The bit with the Olympic Torch and the commentator just flat out telling the audience what they're supposed to be feeling at the end of that (otherwise generic and mostly forgettable) episode is one of the worst things I have ever seen in television.

Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
Hey Occ: MrL_JaKiri is the only one of these fools you need to listen to okay (other than me, of course)

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
JaKiri is one of the most popular posters in the Who megathreads, which means he is one of the worst posters absolutely everywhere else. A valuable guideline.

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

Oxxidation posted:

JaKiri is one of the most popular posters in the Who megathreads, which means he is one of the worst posters absolutely everywhere else. A valuable guideline.

Hey! Stay out of Riverdale!

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Escobarbarian
Jun 18, 2004


Grimey Drawer
I've never seen him outside of the Who threads but he's right like 95% of the time there so he's cool in my book!

I just read that sentence back and :( :( :(

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