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Spoilers Russell T. Davies Returns to Doctor Who as New Showrunner

Nah, it doesn't. I don't give a fig about that show and I loved "Rogue."

But it does help if you enjoy Jane Austen like I do. ;)
Sure. I read a Jane Austen novel every July for Jane Austen July. It's interesting reading romance stories written by someone who never married or had any children.

That's a lot different from modern authors writing regency romance.

I don't think they're the same.
 
Sure. I read a Jane Austen novel every July for Jane Austen July. It's interesting reading romance stories written by someone who never married or had any children.

That's a lot different from modern authors writing regency romance.

I don't think they're the same.
Wow. Just...wow. :lol:

Also, congratulations on completely missing my point.
 
I’ve… experienced Bridgerton. And Austen. (I am being slightly jokey here, Bridgerton is alright, and Austen is famously considered one of the originators of the novel form.)

Rogue is to Doctor Who as modern pulp Regency Romance is to Austen.

Written by people who are of a different cultural and linguistic background entirely (American influenced modernity) who model current social trends onto a form it does not entirely suit, and full of somewhat cludgey messaging about a subject that they do not have firsthand experience of, with added sex obsession inserted as ‘spice’.

In this case, they don’t understand the term ‘cosplay’ and the most fanfic element is Legally Distinct Captain Jack. It also has that slashfic element of women writing gay men.

Fine for AO3, but cringe for Saturday family TV.
 
Count me in the "never seen/read Bridgerton and loved Rogue" crowd. Sometimes a good episode is just a good episode regardless.

And a very kind "fuck you homophobes" to those who disliked the episode for that reason.

Disclaimer — I also found ninety percent of Ten’s amorous tendencies pretty cringeworthy, particularly the Queen Elizabeth joke in End of Time.
But the Kylie stuff in Rogue was even more cringeworthy.
I think also there’s a difference between a romantic spark and a lusty one, and Rogue was heading into Carry On territory. In fact Carry On is what that episode brings to mind most strongly.
(To be fair, Bridgerton also inhabits that Carry On space, but thats pretty much part of its identity.)
 
> It wasn't a better show with more money

I hope more creative people realise this.

Money isn't a substitution for creativity. Red Dwarf - especially seasons 1-6, but also 10-13, was amazing despite having a budget smaller than a Napoleanic flea
 
A show sorting out its early-installment weirdness isn't really the same thing as making retcons later. You can change Spock from a Vulcanian to a Vulcan in episode 3 without anyone caring, but not episode 30.
Yeah, but the Earth Starship Enterprise and Vulcanian thing went on well into the series, at least to the end of Season 1 and possibly even into Season 2, so it was a lot more than just the first few episodes.
Disco's producers thinking they could get away with drastically retconning the Klingon makeup after three series with a Klingon in the main cast just blows my mind. Of course people weren't going to be happy with that, of course it'd get thrown out the moment Michael Dorn agreed to come back.
Yeah, while I did grow to like the new Klingons, I was extremely relieved when they more or less retconned them out of existence after the second season of Discovery.
I don’t think anyone minds when future humans in story x don’t seem quite like future humans in story y from thirty years ago.
Even ‘UNIT dating’ is a discussion, for some quite a big one, but by and large it’s not something so broken as to cause problems.
Bit when you tinker with the single constant of the show ie. The Doctor, it is going to cause problems going forwards.
It’s almost like having the Tardis not be a Police box because it’s Chameleon Circuit broke down in Totters Yard.
(Which was also messed with with the TC/Fugitive stuff and caused similar ructions)

As a show, Who can get away with a fairly loose approach, but the constant is always the Doctor, and there’s where you add to history, not rewrite it.
But they didn't rewrite anything, all they did was add an extra layer to the earlier part of the Doctor's life, which the shows never really dealt with anyways.

It is what it is. I stopped watching Who during Capaldis run. It was not that good. From what I read and saw clips of, the next few seasons would not have been to my liking. The fact is some franchises just run way too long. Who and Star Trek are mostly stale to me now. I have watched new Trek and like a small amount of it but for the most part it's not been very good or memorable for me. Doctor who is closing in on 1000 hours of content. That's a lot. I suggest to people to just watch your favorite seasons and doctors and leave it at that. Most of us are at an age where we won't ever watch the series from episode one all the way to present. Time is no longer on our side. Same with Trek. Just counting live action it's over 800 hours.

One of my all time favorite scifi shows is Farscape. It wasn't ran into the ground. I would like to see at least one reunion mini series but overall I'm good with how that show all turned out from start to finish. With the exception of two episodes I loved them all. 90 episodes and it never spinoffs, cast changes etc. It's highly rewatchable for me.

Star Trek and Who's heydays are long behind them. They are not coming back. No matter what is churned out at this point.
Gotta disagree with you here, we are getting some of the absolute best Trek we have ever gotten right now. Pretty much everything from the Disco time jump on has been absolutely fantastic.
The last three seasons of Disco took the show up to a whole new level from the from the first two seasons.
I enjoyed Season 2 of Picard a lot more than most people, and I absolutely loved Season 3.
Lower Decks was amazing from start to finish, and so far Strange New Worlds has been even better.
And Starfleet Academy is off to an absolutely fantastic start.
Rogue was the best episode of the series, closely followed by 73 Yards.
I loved Rogue, but I could not stand 73 Yard. I don't know if I'd say 73 Yards is bad, because it does seem to have done a good job doing what it set out to do, I just didn't like what it set out to do.
 
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I’ve… experienced Bridgerton. And Austen. (I am being slightly jokey here, Bridgerton is alright, and Austen is famously considered one of the originators of the novel form.)

Rogue is to Doctor Who as modern pulp Regency Romance is to Austen.
Bridgerton is pretty much Austen fanfic. And Rogue is making fun of that. Through the lens of poking fun at stuff, I enjoyed the episode. It's not the best Doctor Who, but it's one of the stand out episodes of Ncuti's era.I definitely recommend the book since it has good stuff that looks like it got cut out for time.

One of the problems with Ncuti's era is that the episodes are too short. They should be longer. Typically, shows that only go 8 episodes a season have nearly an hour or longer episodes.
 
> It wasn't a better show with more money

I hope more creative people realise this.

Money isn't a substitution for creativity. Red Dwarf - especially seasons 1-6, but also 10-13, was amazing despite having a budget smaller than a Napoleanic flea
This is so true.

No matter the budget, you have to tell a good story.
 
Bridgerton is pretty much Austen fanfic. And Rogue is making fun of that. Through the lens of poking fun at stuff, I enjoyed the episode. It's not the best Doctor Who, but it's one of the stand out episodes of Ncuti's era.I definitely recommend the book since it has good stuff that looks like it got cut out for time.

One of the problems with Ncuti's era is that the episodes are too short. They should be longer. Typically, shows that only go 8 episodes a season have nearly an hour or longer episodes.
Nothing wrong with the length of the episodes themselves. We got plenty of gems with the usual running time and making them longer wouldn't have made them any better.

There's a fair argument to be made about the length of the seasons themselves, but there's no reason for the episodes to be longer to compensate. Besides, that would've run against the whole point of the shorter season from a production standpoint.
 
What they should've done is made Space Babies and Devil's Chord longer. This would've lowered production costs for the rest of season one dramatically, as there would've been no one left watching the series to make episodes for.
 
Yeah, but the Earth Starship Enterprise and Vulcanian thing went on well into the series, at least to the end of Season 1 and possibly even into Season 2, so it was a lot more than just the first few episodes.

Yeah, while I did grow to like the new Klingons, I was extremely relieved when they more or less retconned them out of existence after the second season of Discovery.

But they didn't rewrite anything, all they did was add an extra layer to the earlier part of the Doctor's life, which the shows never really dealt with anyways.


Gotta disagree with you here, we are getting some of the absolute best Trek we have ever gotten right now. Pretty much everything from the Disco time jump on has been absolutely fantastic.
The last three seasons of Disco took the show up to a whole new level from the from the first two seasons.
I enjoyed Season 2 of Picard a lot more than most people, and I absolutely loved Season 3.
Lower Decks was amazing from start to finish, and so far Strange New Worlds has been even better.
And Starfleet Academy is off to an absolutely fantastic start.

I loved Rogue, but I could not stand 73 Yard. I don't know if I'd say 73 Yards is bad, because it does seem to have done a good job doing what it set out to do, I just didn't like what it set out to do.

If what it added flatly contradicted stuff that had been stated and shown and been plot points time and again, and also changed the fundamental nature of the character, then it rewrote it. Which is what happened.
Kid staring into temporal schism? Added, not contradicting anything we got on screen. Sad if you like Looms, but nothing fundamental.
Doctor sleeping in barn, living with Shobogans? Added, no contradictions, again, not great for the NA crowd.
TC? Fundamentally changed the Doctor, fundamentally changes the history of Gallifrey, contradicts a ton of stuff.
 
Bridgerton is pretty much Austen fanfic. And Rogue is making fun of that. Through the lens of poking fun at stuff, I enjoyed the episode. It's not the best Doctor Who, but it's one of the stand out episodes of Ncuti's era.I definitely recommend the book since it has good stuff that looks like it got cut out for time.

One of the problems with Ncuti's era is that the episodes are too short. They should be longer. Typically, shows that only go 8 episodes a season have nearly an hour or longer episodes.

I don’t know that it is making fun of it so much as aping it.
I’ve seen quite a bit of Bridgerton, and enjoyed it more than this episode. Bridgerton is the parody tbh. I probably enjoyed it more than some of the actual Austen screen adaptations as a response.
Rogue is going to date horribly though, because it’s too dependent on that ‘Bridgerton era tv’ context. It’s happened before in Davies Who, but at least Bad Wolf got lucky in that Weakest Link and Big Brother made a comeback. What not to wear? Not so much.
It should have hewn to actual historical a teensy bit more perhaps, which tends not to date quite so hard when used in media.

Rogue has a paper thin vaguely-terror-of-the-Zygons body snatchers plot upon which a bunch of stuff was hung. And the Doctor/Rogue interactions were cringe inducing. At least last time the show decided to have the Doctor in something like this situation (girl in the fireplace) there was the implication of scenes occurring off camera to make the sort-of-relationship vaguely plausible. (Though still, a heck of an age gap…)
Here it was by the numbers, cringe inducingly tacky, rushed, and I feel it just didn’t work.
Not helped by the American Musical Theatre Star as Agent Who Travels Through Time and is Gay Captain J— I mean Rogue. We’d seen this character before basically, and done better. Yes, even the casting felt like a retread.
It wasn’t exactly a kind or positive portrayal of homosexual relationships either tbh.

There is a story there that could work. And I can *easily* believe the novel was better. (Much of classic Who for me exists more as literature than screen, because of when I grew up, and many of those are so much better too. I cannot tolerate season 24 for the most part on screen, but in the books? So much better. Especially Time and the Rani and Delta and the Bannermen. Even Dragonfite is better in the book.)
But what we got on screen didn’t work for me, because if nothing else, it felt like it was lazy. Not a meal, but some leftovers from four different meals plopped on a plate and not even reheated so much as given a plop of ketchup.
It has some nice moments within the story itself though, it would be dishonest not to acknowledge that.
 
What they should've done is made Space Babies and Devil's Chord longer. This would've lowered production costs for the rest of season one dramatically, as there would've been no one left watching the series to make episodes for.

I liked Devil's Chord*, one of the better episodes of the Gatwa era. I thought that it was generally well received too.



* insert snobbish jibe about the Beatles
 
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