remusclaw posted:

For a couple of seasons it honestly looked like the Doctor only succeeded in killing his own people.

MisterBibs posted:

Didn't they eventually lean into that by saying that while he initially described it as trying (and failing) to kill both sides, in truth he was mostly aiming at the Time Lords?

PriorMarcus posted:

Yep. The Time Lord's became much worse than the Daleks over the course of the war. It's a shame Moffat made it all so dull and pedestrian. The 50th undoing the destruction of Gallifrey is his greatest mistake, especially because he did nothing of interest with it.

TinTower posted:

Also, Moffat swung and missed on using Twice Upon a Time to just tie up the "all thirteen!" thing very nicely.

2house2fly posted:

He swung? I must have missed that.

PriorMarcus posted:

Yep. The Time Lord's became much worse than the Daleks over the course of the war. It's a shame Moffat made it all so dull and pedestrian. The 50th undoing the destruction of Gallifrey is his greatest mistake, especially because he did nothing of interest with it.

PriorMarcus posted:

Yep. The Time Lord's became much worse than the Daleks over the course of the war. It's a shame Moffat made it all so dull and pedestrian. The 50th undoing the destruction of Gallifrey is his greatest mistake, especially because he did nothing of interest with it.

DoctorWhat posted:

Moffat only showed the end of the war, when - explicitly! - all the nightmare weapons the Time Lords made had been used up and the war had degraded, Skaro-like, into infantry and trenches. He didn't "make it pedestrian" and this willfull choice to ignore the actual text frustrates me even four years later.

MrL_JaKiri posted:

"Oh but the text says it makes sense for it be dull and pedestrian" is entirely irrelevant

MisterBibs posted:

How so? The text tells you precisely that everything fanciable (and more importantly, unfilmable)*). We're aware of things like the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been-King with his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres are all dead and gone. The text tells, the viewer accepts.

* (Which, had they been filmed, they would've been met with criticism because those things were unfilmable, of course, and should've been never seen, of course)

corn in the bible posted:

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/SlimyTenseFanworms-mobile.mp4

remusclaw posted:

The legacy of Doctor Who is not in what it has successfully done, but in what it has tried to do in spite of every reason that it probably shouldn't.

corn in the bible posted:

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/SilentFancyIvorybilledwoodpecker-mobile.mp4

Rirse posted:

Speaking of really bad production values, I remember seeing a Youtube video of a really silly death of some guy to a black bean bag. Think that clip had the Master in it.

corn in the bible posted:

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/SilentFancyIvorybilledwoodpecker-mobile.mp4

MisterBibs posted:

How so? The text tells you precisely that everything fanciable (and more importantly, unfilmable)*). We're aware of things like the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been-King with his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres are all dead and gone. The text tells, the viewer accepts.

DoctorWhat posted:

Moffat only showed the end of the war, when - explicitly! - all the nightmare weapons the Time Lords made had been used up and the war had degraded, Skaro-like, into infantry and trenches. He didn't "make it pedestrian" and this willfull choice to ignore the actual text frustrates me even four years later.

James Henry posted:

It’s just occurred to me that as Steven Moffat’s run on Doctor Who has finished, I can now tell you how I sent the worst typo IN HISTORY to the production team without worrying I’ll be giving away any potential spoilers or anything.

The Doctor Who series before the last one (or possibly the one before that), I was approached for possibly writing an episode for the series, which as you can imagine is quite an exciting thing to be asked to do. The odds weren’t great, I think they had four episode slots free, and they’d asked sixteen or so writers to come in and do a pitch. So after submitting a few one-paragraph ideas, I got on the train to Cardiff and had a preliminary meeting with the lovely script editors Richard and Derek (*waves*), then worked the ideas up a bit more, and then was asked to come to another meeting in Chiswick, in front of script eds, producer and S. Moffat. I’ve met him before, he’s very nice.

The pitch meet opened thusly:

MOFFAT : So, what's your relationship with Doctor Who?
ME: Well, I wasn't allowed to watch it because it was deemed 'too scary', but my library had the Target novelisations, so in my mind there was only one Doctor who sometimes had a scarf and sometimes didn't, but didn't really have a face because I'm not great at faces, but either way, he always seemed more of a literary figure than a visual one.
MOFFAT: (shocked) You weren't allowed to watch Doctor Who?
ME: *sad face*
MOFFAT: That's basically child abuse!
ME: (getting phone out) I KNOW, RIGHT?! Please call my mum and tell her.

(I didn't actually do the last bit but MAN I wanted to).

I then did the worst pitch I’ve ever done. Started off well, then my brain clagged up I said ‘and then’ a million times and forgot bits and had to go back and start again at least twice I DON’T RECOMMEND THIS and I was reduced to asking for some water, and the sound of the water jug being slid across the table to me was exactly the screeching sound from Men In Black when Will Smith drags the table across the interview room, it was uncanny.

By then, the odds had already narrowed to eight writers for two eps, although if you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’ll have spotted my name isn’t on any of the credits, so you know how this ends. Well sort of, smarty pants, although you don’t know exactly how I get there, so settle down.

Sadly, the big ideas I’d had were already taken (the Doctor organises a heist! we go deep inside the Tardis for a thing!), so I was given an idea to muck about with: Strax the Sontaran, member of the Paternoster Gang the Doctor’s occasional chum, is taken back to his home planet by his fellow Sontarans, who view him as a traitor for his regular helpings-out with the human race, not to mention one Time Lord, and place him on trial, the sentence: death. And probably a horrible death too, because if you’re not familiar with the Sontarans, they’re basically the angriest baked potatoes in the galaxy, and enter every room like this: GAAHHHHHH!

So it doesn’t look good for Strax. I had an idea for how you’d explore this, and Steven Moffat was throwing better ideas at me like one of those baseball machines in American films, I was sort of juggling his ideas while mine fell all over the floor and rolled under tables and so on, but we got somewhere in the end, and even though it was the worst pitch I’d ever done, I got to go away and write it up.

This reminds me, I had another idea about an old battle Tardis. A Tardis specifically designed by the Time Lords for WAR, and they said ‘ah, we’re just about to do this’ but clearly they never did. Where’s Battle Tardis! I LOVE Battle Tardis!

Anyway I wrote it up, and they batted it about, and by then it was me and another writer up for one remaining slot and to cut a long story short (too late!), they went with the other writer, so I didn’t get to write for the Twelfth Doctor in the end (sad face).

But that’s not what this is about. What this is about is, during the development process I got an email from the script editors/producers of Doctor Who with the RUDEST TITLE HEADING EVER.

Crikey! I thought, and also Gosh, and I Don’t Think They Meant This Email Title For Me. Had they perhaps replied to another email, forwarded it to someone, then it had got all caught up with their email to me? It seemed unlikely, but I couldn't think of a better explanation, I decided to reply to it, not mentioning the somewhat enormous faux pas in the email, they’ll spot if themselves, I thought, and realise what they did.

Only a day or so later did the horrid truth assert itself, like a Battle Tardis would have done if they’d ever done that episode. Because I suddenly realised that the email was in reply to ME, which meant the original title had been written by YOURS TRULY, and they’d just politely not mentioned it and replied back to me in much the way I’d decided to do to them.

So remember, the idea for the episode was for 'Strax' to be put 'on trial'.

Not, as I'd written



*sigh*

Box of Bunnies posted:

The villain should have been Ace who, having graduated from the academy, eventually advanced to head of the war council, advocating the use of Sonic Baseball Bats to whack Daleks out of time.

2house2fly posted:

I prefer Moffat's version because it implicates the ruling class specifically, in keeping with his overt efforts to separate the Time Lords from the normal Gallifreyans. I suppose there is a case to be made that a long enough time of living under the rule of militant warmongers would turn all of the common people into irredeemable monsters, but that line of thought seems a little bit pessimistic for Steven Moffat's vision of the show
He swung? I must have missed that.

Rirse posted:

After watching only handful of random Matt and Peter episodes and then Twice Upon a Time, I decided to just go back to the start of the revival and go from there. Loving it and just reached Christmas Invasion...but what was the point of the evil Santa bots at the start? They are not related to the Sycorax and disappear as soon that Christmas tree gets blew up.

Stabbatical posted:

Having not watched the whole of the old series, was it ever shown that there were non-Time Lord Gallifreyans before Moffat's run?

Rirse posted:

After watching only handful of random Matt and Peter episodes and then Twice Upon a Time, I decided to just go back to the start of the revival and go from there. Loving it and just reached Christmas Invasion...but what was the point of the evil Santa bots at the start? They are not related to the Sycorax and disappear as soon that Christmas tree gets blew up.

MrL_JaKiri posted:

The best portrayal of the Time Lords was, and always will be, their very first one though.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Burkion posted:

I've said this before and I'll say it again

You want to see Doctor Who looking at its best, look at the Third Doctor's run, maybe early Fourth Doctor.

While the production values got 'better' after that, the cost of making a show also sky rocketed so while they could do immensely more complicated or technologically impressive things, they just look awful. Just truly dreadful.

See any of the weird alien monsters of the Third Doctor, some of whom look genuinely creepy (Axos I'm looking at you and you as well original Autons) and then compare it to the fully animatronic demon thing from the Seventh Doctor and how naff it was

Stabbatical posted:

Having not watched the whole of the old series, was it ever shown that there were non-Time Lord Gallifreyans before Moffat's run? I'd had the impression that everyone was a Time Lord there. It definitely seemed that way in the RTD years.

The_Doctor posted:

All the Chancellery guards you see aren’t Time Lords, just regular Gallifreyans.

Bicyclops posted:

Yeah, this is true.

I hope Chibnall mostly just kind of leaves them out of his run. I'm a little worn out on "the Doctor, trickster god, goes back back to Gallifrey and befuddles all the stodgy, blustering tyrants with his quick wit until they all beg for him to be their leader" for awhile. They can bring back the Time Lords for Fifteen's run or something. I could also use a break from the Cybermen, and maybe a season away from the Master.

Forktoss posted:

What better way to celebrate the end of the Moffat era than with that age-old enemy of his, the cushion