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Best producer/showrunner?
This poll is closed.
Verity Lambert 30 15.31%
Barry Letts 7 3.57%
Phillip Hinchcliffe 32 16.33%
John Nathan-Turner 6 3.06%
Russell T Davies 33 16.84%
Steven Moffat 50 25.51%
Chris Chibnall (I am from the future) 38 19.39%
Total: 196 votes
[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

 
  • Locked thread
CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Jerusalem posted:

And we're almost up to the Christmas Special and the end of Capaldi/start of Whittaker too!

In like two days!

:derp:

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Doctor Zero
Sep 21, 2002

Would you like a jelly baby?
It's been in my pocket through 4 regenerations,
but it's still good.

Jerusalem posted:

I planned to after finishing the 8th Doctor Adventures but the very end of that spoiled something from the Six/Charley run so I decided to get into that and finish up Blue Forgotten Planet then jump onto that. Gotta get caught up on that and Doom Coalition so I can get started on The Time War.... oh my God there is so much Big Finish :stare:

And we're almost up to the Christmas Special and the end of Capaldi/start of Whittaker too!

I hear you. All this BF setting up the Time War has me itching to go back and watch Eccleston’s run again. I haven’t seen that in ages.

Also your review of Night of the Doctor is awesome. :patriot: I keep that short on my ipad and watch it all the time.

aBagorn
Aug 26, 2004

CommonShore posted:

In like two days!

:derp:

I’m not going to make it!

(Hi, I’m new - I started with the Eccleston run about a month ago with the hopes of watching at least the television stories and being able to watch this live. Alas I have failed, being 2 das left and only just now starting on Capaldi’s run)

e:

corn in the bible posted:

These days I feel like big finish is better than the TV. Hopefully Chibnall will fix that but who knows

Obviously I still have 4 Moffat years to go, but I think I completely understand what you mean

aBagorn fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Dec 23, 2017

corn in the bible
Jun 5, 2004

Oh no oh god it's all true!

aBagorn posted:

I’m not going to make it!

(Hi, I’m new - I started with the Eccleston run about a month ago with the hopes of watching at least the television stories and being able to watch this live. Alas I have failed, being 2 das left and only just now starting on Capaldi’s run)

These days I feel like big finish is better than the TV. Hopefully Chibnall will fix that but who knows

aBagorn
Aug 26, 2004
quote is not edit

Dabir
Nov 10, 2012

aBagorn posted:

Obviously I still have 4 Moffat years to go

I have good news and bad news

corn in the bible
Jun 5, 2004

Oh no oh god it's all true!
I think it helps that, at most, overarching Big Finish plotlines get finished up in three or four stories. There's companions who last longer but they're interested in actually, you know, presenting a plot and finishing it before starting a new one.

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy

Dabir posted:

I have good news and bad news

The good news is that Capaldi is a blessing and deserves the best stories in the history of the program


The bad news is that he rarely gets what he deserves.

Pesky Splinter
Feb 16, 2011

A worried pug.

corn in the bible posted:

These days I feel like big finish is better than the TV. Hopefully Chibnall will fix that but who knows

I feel like they're more consistant writers than Moffat. Obviously they've all got their own quirks, and good and bad - Moffat can do fantastic one-off episodes, but he can't plot a narrative arc for poo poo.

It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly why I tend not to like Moffat's handling of stuff on the whole - though I think he got better on the last series, with Bill. I know one of the big things I have - :siren: Spoilers for aBagorn :siren:

if you're going to kill a character - make sure they loving stay dead. If you're trying to set up a tragedy, don't immediately undermine it by waving a loving magic wand and then "oh actually they're alright now". Clara dying by playing Doctor (which is set up in the series) is tragedy - the Doctor spends an entire episode grieving over her - undone with "actually she's now an immortal and goes on her own coming soon Big Finish adventures, yeah she does die technically, but in the future lol". Or Bill with "hey I'm a human monster losing my sense of self in a metal shell, oh don't worry I'm now a water person it's all fine".

Kill your loving darlings, Moffat.


To be fair on that last one, that could be addressed in the upcoming special.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Burkion posted:

The good news is that Capaldi is a blessing and deserves the best stories in the history of the program


The bad news is that he rarely gets what he deserves.

Yeah, if someone was to make a list of the ten best (non-audio) Who stories ever, which would necessarily exclude at least a couple doctors, Capaldi would get at least two.

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?

Pesky Splinter posted:

I feel like they're more consistant writers than Moffat. Obviously they've all got their own quirks, and good and bad - Moffat can do fantastic one-off episodes, but he can't plot a narrative arc for poo poo.

It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly why I tend not to like Moffat's handling of stuff on the whole - though I think he got better on the last series, with Bill. I know one of the big things I have - :siren: Spoilers for aBagorn :siren:

if you're going to kill a character - make sure they loving stay dead. If you're trying to set up a tragedy, don't immediately undermine it by waving a loving magic wand and then "oh actually they're alright now". Clara dying by playing Doctor (which is set up in the series) is tragedy - the Doctor spends an entire episode grieving over her - undone with "actually she's now an immortal and goes on her own coming soon Big Finish adventures, yeah she does die technically, but in the future lol". Or Bill with "hey I'm a human monster losing my sense of self in a metal shell, oh don't worry I'm now a water person it's all fine".

Kill your loving darlings, Moffat.


To be fair on that last one, that could be addressed in the upcoming special.

Clara rules and deserves life actually. There's no reason she shouldn't get away with the same poo poo the Doctor does.

Organza Quiz
Nov 7, 2009


I think the problem is less that and more giving her a massive big dramatic death scene with huge consequences and then effectively undoing it. That’s quite different to just letting her go off and be a cool adventurer which is a cool thing that I’m glad happened.

2house2fly
Nov 14, 2012

You did a super job wrapping things up! And I'm not just saying that because I have to!
It's worth considering the idea that a character's death being "undone" right after it happened means that nobody was "going to kill a character" or "trying to set up a tragedy" after all.

DoctorWhat
Nov 18, 2011

A little privacy, please?
Yeah, that too.

Crusader
Apr 11, 2002

Pesky Splinter
Feb 16, 2011

A worried pug.

DoctorWhat posted:

Clara rules and deserves life actually. There's no reason she shouldn't get away with the same poo poo the Doctor does.

Clara is a flat, living plot point until Capaldi appears, and only then becomes an actual character. But that's a different argument about how her character is handled, rather than her exit.

In a well structured narrative, you don't build up to something, explore its fallout, and then turn around and go "Oh well none of that actually mattered", because it's just wasting everbodies time.
Case in point; Clara has an almost comically long, drawn out death scene with slow-mo and smoke, followed by another hour's episode dealing with the fallout - Twelve in a paradox prison mourning for two billion years - only to be resolved by plucking her out of time and making her a semi immortal who's gonna live for, like forever, and then go back and die someday, when the fancy takes her.

As an exercise for contrast, you know who else rules? Donna Noble. Compare her fate to Clara's - which do you think is stronger? Not Moffat's twee whismy bollocks, in my opinion. The poo poo that Davis puts on Donna isn't undone. I'd argue it's even worse in her case. It affects her, and the characters around her - it sticks.

I don't make it any secret that I didn't particularly like Hell Bent, where they ultimately went with Clara's character, or the character of Me, and I joked about it at the time, but there's much larger issues than the ending. And, unfortunately it jumbles together with how Moffat writes.

2house2fly posted:

It's worth considering the idea that a character's death being "undone" right after it happened means that nobody was "going to kill a character" or "trying to set up a tragedy" after all.

This is true. But that raises the question of why loving bother with it at all then - just skip the middle man. I don't mean to sound like an edgy Lidster demanding characters be in perpetual misery, but poo poo's gotta have weight. Drama's got to have some kind of impact, otherwise, what's the point? (See also, the "Hybrid").

Probably not the best way for me to explain it - I'm struggling to put it in words (and am not particularlly satisified with all the above ones).
Short version; I don't like the way Moffat plots poo poo, and it's a big tangle of poo poo, and as long as it's not Cyberwoman levels of terrible, I'm looking forward to a new take with a new Doctor.

[e]:

The series has been going down hill since Davis left JNT left Tom Baker left Colour televison after The Unearthly Child pilot :o:

Pesky Splinter fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Dec 23, 2017

After The War
Apr 12, 2005

to all of my Architects
let me be traitor

Yes, that would be correct.

Who Wiki posted:

22/05/1965 – The terrifying Daleks are depicted as bumbling idiots. Doctor Who dies.

:smugbert:

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

I mean, at the end of the series, Clara's time with the Doctor is definitively done, and the implication that she gets to adventure in a vague sort of undead state, refusing to let her death stick all the way, is fine. It allows for her to die for all intents and purposes for the Doctor, and for Clara to know that she will die before she sees him again, so there's still loss. Twelve tries to break the rules to bring her back and only marginally succeeds because his plan was always doomed to fail.

I think the "dead, but not really" thing was handled a bit more weakly with Amy, Rory and Bill, though, and I do agree that Moffat probably could have stood not to do it with all his companions. I guess it's sort of a Russell Davies problem too, though, because something similar happens with both Rose and Donna (memory erasure to live a completely different life is dying without dying, and Rose even describes her parallel universe as death). Martha is the only new Who companion who just leaves and lives her life, which is what most of the classic Who companions did, the handful of deaths and Zoe and Jaime notwithstanding.

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

I can't believe I forgot about Nardole. I guess he gets a typical Who sendoff too.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Pesky Splinter posted:

The series has been going down hill since Davis left JNT left Tom Baker left Colour televison after The Unearthly Child pilot :o:

It was a perfectly competent series about a policeman walking through the fog then it went downhill when it turned into all this rubbish about some schoolteachers and some teenager and some old geezer with white hair.

Pesky Splinter
Feb 16, 2011

A worried pug.

Bicyclops posted:

I mean, at the end of the series, Clara's time with the Doctor is definitively done, and the implication that she gets to adventure in a vague sort of undead state, refusing to let her death stick all the way, is fine. It allows for her to die for all intents and purposes for the Doctor, and for Clara to know that she will die before she sees him again, so there's still loss. Twelve tries to break the rules to bring her back and only marginally succeeds because his plan was always doomed to fail.

I think the "dead, but not really" thing was handled a bit more weakly with Amy, Rory and Bill, though, and I do agree that Moffat probably could have stood not to do it with all his companions. I guess it's sort of a Russell Davies problem too, though, because something similar happens with both Rose and Donna (memory erasure to live a completely different life is dying without dying, and Rose even describes her parallel universe as death). Martha is the only new Who companion who just leaves and lives her life, which is what most of the classic Who companions did, the handful of deaths and Zoe and Jaime notwithstanding.

That's not a view I'd considered before. Yeah, I guess I'm less bothered that she's technically alive than I am with the build up of it to be honest. :shrug:

And actually, that is one thing I hope they do in the next series, just have more characters who say "Thanks for the ride, Doctor - I'm just going to walk out those doors.". Also if they could do a historical without lion people, or ice squids.

Wheat Loaf posted:

It was a perfectly competent series about a policeman walking through the fog then it went downhill when it turned into all this rubbish about some schoolteachers and some teenager and some old geezer with white hair.
:lol:

I don't know - it got a bit shakey after the second "dun" on the "dun-dun-dun" theme.

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

I guess it ends up being tough in the end for companions to straight up die because eventually you're sort of like "You kind of have a responsibility for this, Doctor." Like, Adric was insufferable but Tegan and Nyssa being really upset about it is 100 percent right. He was a kid the Doctor was responsible for. Poor Katarina barely understood what was happening. If that happened to half the companions, it would make you start not to trust the character.

Wheat Loaf
Feb 13, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
My assumption is that audience expectations have changed for this kind of programme, combined with how the Doctor's relationships with his companions sometimes varies compared with the classic series (most particularly Ten and Rose). I feel like writers (especially someone who's as keenly aware of fandom as Moffat appears to be) probably worry that if they don't definitively give a reason for why the Doctor can't just go and meet up with his friends after their actors they leave the TARDIS, people will complain about it.

In the case of RTD's companions, I think the problem was that there was never any reason they'd want to leave the Doctor voluntarily (other than Martha, who I like as a companion both in the show and in a meta sense). Moffat has the opposite problem; his companions always have a "hub" and don't really travel with the Doctor on a "full time" basis so there's not usually a good reason in-story for them to just stop travelling with him when they can go home whenever they like (Amy and Rory could've and should've had that; just "We'll always value our time with the Doctor and he'll always be welcome in our home, but we want to settle down now" would've been a perfectly good ending for them).

Narsham
Jun 5, 2008

Bicyclops posted:

I guess it ends up being tough in the end for companions to straight up die because eventually you're sort of like "You kind of have a responsibility for this, Doctor." Like, Adric was insufferable but Tegan and Nyssa being really upset about it is 100 percent right. He was a kid the Doctor was responsible for. Poor Katarina barely understood what was happening. If that happened to half the companions, it would make you start not to trust the character.

Technically, every single companion (except perhaps Me) is dead from the perspective of a time traveler. So, not to get too Moffatty about it, what matters is the story we tell about the characters. Amy & Rory's story, say, or Clara's story, or Donna Noble's story, or Rose's, or Ian & Barbara's. We see Adric's story end, on screen. We know that the other stories end, off screen, even if we don't see them. From that perspective, Adric gets a more tragic ending than Donna's, even though in terms of our investment in the characters and our ability to project what happens to them outside the scope of what we see on screen, Donna's "death" is far more affecting than Adric's, especially now where the latter's doesn't come as a surprise and may indeed come as a relief.

I think it is fair to say that sometimes, Moffat is more interested in exploring the Doctor's perspective on things than in giving a companion a genuinely tragic story. Then again, the only companions who get genuinely tragic stories are Katarina and Sarah Kingdom (who are as close to one-shot companions as Who can manage) and Donna Noble. I don't think Adric's story is tragic, exactly, and it could even be read as redemptive given what he was like when we first met him. It's the trolling, where Moffat keeps faking one kind of story before giving us another, that seems to infuriate so many fans. But it's possible to be a successful writer and an rear end in a top hat. Some have even argued it's essential, though that's refutable.

2house2fly
Nov 14, 2012

You did a super job wrapping things up! And I'm not just saying that because I have to!
Clara being brought back is part of the fallout of her death. The Doctor never even considered trying to undo what happened to Amy and Rory's baby, and flat-out refused to try and bring Danny back for Clara. Changing the past is clearly an inviolable rule for him ("not one line") and her death pushes him to break it.

oneforthevine
Sep 25, 2015


2house2fly posted:

Clara being brought back is part of the fallout of her death. The Doctor never even considered trying to undo what happened to Amy and Rory's baby, and flat-out refused to try and bring Danny back for Clara. Changing the past is clearly an inviolable rule for him ("not one line") and her death pushes him to break it.

This is the entire point of the hybrid arc, the Clara arc, and the Doctor’s arc over the course of Series 9. It astounds me that people consider it a cop-out, when it’s clearly the intended endpoint of the narrative.

And to those complaining that this is cheaper than Donna’s end - the Doctor explicitly TRIES that again, and Clara tells him “not happening, pal.” Moffat’s aware of how he’s playing with the idea.

Astroman
Apr 8, 2001


I'm less interested in Undead Clara and Me's Diner TARDIS Adventures on Big Finish than I am Splinter Clara's Adventures on Big Finish Meeting All The Other Doctors, Multiple Times.

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


oneforthevine posted:

This is the entire point of the hybrid arc, the Clara arc, and the Doctor’s arc over the course of Series 9. It astounds me that people consider it a cop-out, when it’s clearly the intended endpoint of the narrative.

And to those complaining that this is cheaper than Donna’s end - the Doctor explicitly TRIES that again, and Clara tells him “not happening, pal.” Moffat’s aware of how he’s playing with the idea.

The other thing about all of it is that it makes Rory's initial series 5 indictment of the Doctor (Vampires of Venice?) seem more apt - that he's dangerous to his friends because he inspires people to try to impress him.

Bicyclops
Aug 27, 2004

I'm not sure that Doctor Who will ever have a weirder transition that from Caves of Androzani to The Twin Dilemma. Caves of Androzani feels like the end of them finally figuring out the Fifth Doctor, after his era mostly getting better as it goes, and by ten minutes into Twins, it feels like they've basically said "How can we completely piss all of that good will away?" It's interesting rewatching now that I've heard Colin do Big Finish (I had completely wrongly assumed that a lot of what was wrong with it was his acting). I wish he had gotten some much better scripts to work with in his time on TV and gotten as much time in the role as he wanted.

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
It's like

Okay we just made one of the best serials in the entire series that will rarely ever be topped, a complete and total culmination of the Fifth Doctor's entire adventure and character that perfectly ends his story on every single level


Wait what we have to do another serial right after? We have three days?

Pip, Jane, poo poo something out, quick!

Giant Tourtiere
Aug 4, 2006

TRICHER
POUR
GAGNER

Bicyclops posted:

I mean, at the end of the series, Clara's time with the Doctor is definitively done, and the implication that she gets to adventure in a vague sort of undead state, refusing to let her death stick all the way, is fine. It allows for her to die for all intents and purposes for the Doctor, and for Clara to know that she will die before she sees him again, so there's still loss. Twelve tries to break the rules to bring her back and only marginally succeeds because his plan was always doomed to fail.

I think the "dead, but not really" thing was handled a bit more weakly with Amy, Rory and Bill, though, and I do agree that Moffat probably could have stood not to do it with all his companions. I guess it's sort of a Russell Davies problem too, though, because something similar happens with both Rose and Donna (memory erasure to live a completely different life is dying without dying, and Rose even describes her parallel universe as death). Martha is the only new Who companion who just leaves and lives her life, which is what most of the classic Who companions did, the handful of deaths and Zoe and Jaime notwithstanding.

I wonder whether changing fan expectations are part of this as well. Like, fans imagine that if they got to travel with the Doctor, they'd never ever stop because it would be the best thing ever. So to buy a companion quitting, the audience now demands (or the writers think they demand) a much more dramatic reason than just 'actually done now' so it's gotta be your memory is erased or you basically die or are trapped in time or whatever. Because just leaving might not seem authentic.

Where I actually think that a reaction like Tegan's, where she basically just can't stand the horrible poo poo any more, is about as believable as it gets, and the many other classic companions who essentially decide that an itinerant life of danger with an immortal alien is maybe not their forever plan and they're ready to get off now makes perfect sense.

Burkion
May 10, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
Basically future companions need to stop being fans.

They need to be actual characters with their own ideas and dreams and character arcs.



It'd also help if they'd loving break the TARDIS again because the Doctor having anything more than a rudimentary control over where it goes is still the most annoying thing to me. Especially when they forget that on a whim.

After The War
Apr 12, 2005

to all of my Architects
let me be traitor

evenworse username posted:

Where I actually think that a reaction like Tegan's, where she basically just can't stand the horrible poo poo any more, is about as believable as it gets, and the many other classic companions who essentially decide that an itinerant life of danger with an immortal alien is maybe not their forever plan and they're ready to get off now makes perfect sense.

I would love to see some Romana/Nyssa/Turlough departures again: "The group we just saved need someone to stick around and help, and with everything I've learned from our travels, I'm the one to do it." :unsmith:

I guess we kind of got that with Nardole, but it wasn't his choice.

Davros1
Jul 19, 2007

You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible



FYI: BF is giving away a FREE Avengers story (From the first Steed and Mrs Peel) box set today ONLY. So head over to BF!

pgroce
Oct 24, 2002

Bicyclops posted:

I wish he had gotten some much better scripts to work with in his time on TV and gotten as much time in the role as he wanted.

Thank you for encapsulating my feelings about Capaldi so well.

Although we’ll always have Heaven Sent. 6 never got anything remotely as good.

Edward Mass
Sep 14, 2011

𝅘𝅥𝅮 I wanna go home with the armadillo
Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene
Friendliest people and the prettiest women you've ever seen
𝅘𝅥𝅮
In preparation of Capaldi's exit, I'm watching the Fires of Pompeii for Christmas Eve.

CobiWann
Oct 21, 2009

Have fun!

Edward Mass posted:

In preparation of Capaldi's exit, I'm watching the Fires of Pompeii for Christmas Eve.

I’m enjoying a nice plum pudding with Edward Grove.

FreezingInferno
Jul 15, 2010

THERE.
WILL.
BE.
NO.
BATTLE.
HERE!
I figure I may as well share what's become a Christmas Eve tradition of mine: Bad Doctor Who Night! A critically-derided serial, some snacks, and a few nips into the Christmas liquor. Everything a growing boy needs!

I've been doing this since 2014 and so far I've done Warriors Of The Deep, The Twin Dilemma, and The Dominators. Tonight will be exciting puppet action with Jon Pertwee in Invasion Of The Dinosaurs.

The_Doctor
Mar 29, 2007

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

CobiWann posted:

I’m enjoying a nice plum pudding with Edward Grove.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without it!

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Fil5000
Jun 23, 2003

HOLD ON GUYS I'M POSTING ABOUT INTERNET ROBOTS

CobiWann posted:

I’m enjoying a nice plum pudding with Edward Grove.

How IS Edward these days? I heard he was alive.

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