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

[Emperor-Tiberius]

The only stories I don't carer for in that first season is Space Babies and the finale, and only the former I'd say is pretty bad - not unlike New Earth, which I also similarly dislike. The finale is not horrible, per se, but it feels like a first draft - good ideas on paper, and some good scenes, but conceptually it never gels, and also leaves the second part to do a lot of heavy lifting that the earlier part should've done (and the same structure happens in the series 2 finale). Like...the Doctor could've found Ruby's mom all this time if he'd just tried harder? Really? At least if the implication was that he was not as used to technobabble thinking as he was because he was rested while being Tennant 2.0, that'd be one thing, but its never implied so we don't know.

Anyway. The Gatwa era has been a successful one, mostly, with few stinkers and more good episodes to balance the indecisiveness found in the clearly muddled finales. Its still such a shame, of course, that Gatwa may never portray the part again.

 

[Starkers]

Weirdly I didn't mind Space Babies, I think my expectations were low going in so it kinda surpassed them. I had the opposite reaction to The Devil's Chord. All the elements were wonderful, the setting, the outfits, the villain, The Beatles...but for some intangible reason the whole somehow felt less than the sum of its parts. I couldn't even tell you why, though I do think the lack of some actual Beatles music didn't help.

 

[Turtletrekker]

It occurs to me that "Twist and Shout" is actually a cover. I wonder why they couldn't use a cover from a Beatles soundalike/tribute band for that one? I suppose that would have opened an entirely different can of worms that they wouldn't want to deal with.

 

[Samurai8472]

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

They couldn't even afford rights to the Beatles music so compounded with the cost of the making the episode getting the rights would have been even more astronomical if they secured permission.

 

[jaime]

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

I caught the last ten minutes or so and didn’t go back to catch up. And since I like the Beatles that was oddly an extra reason not to bother.
Remembrance looked more like the sixties, and they didn’t have the budget to airbrush out anachronisms on location in those days.

 

[jaime]

They couldn't even afford rights to the Beatles music so compounded with the cost of the making the episode getting the rights would have been even more astronomical if they secured permission.

There’s a less (edit: greater than) than zero chance they just didn’t think to ask the right people.
It’s known fifty percent of the surviving Beatles at least were somewhat Whovian, and then there’s Pete Jackson and his documentaries from recent years.

 

[Mr Awe]

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.

Honestly, even the Ncuti episodes I enjoyed felt kind of rushed. Like they skipped over parts of the plot. Longer isn't always better but I do agree that some of them should've been longer.

 

[jaime]

Honestly, even the Ncuti episodes I enjoyed felt kind of rushed. Like they skipped over parts of the plot. Longer isn't always better but I do agree that some of them should've been longer.

Ten more minutes exposition, three to to fours minutes tears rolling down cheeks less in a lot of cases. And thirty minutes more thought when writing into ‘how can this be interpreted’ as opposed to ‘well, this is what I’ve decided it means’ or ‘this means nothing but it is going in anyway’.

The finales though…

 

[Samurai8472]

The finales though…

Giant CGI creature or go big or go home CGI splurge ( giant mass of daleks or cybermen invading central London)

With a reality ending threat to top off RTD’s kitchen sink mentality



Compared to Moffats first season helming the show

Again all of reality is collapsing but the entire cast spends 75 percent of “ the big bang” inside a museum

A little more scaled back from the previous past seasons

 

[bdub76]

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.

This happens with a lot of shows that rely on current pop culture. Try watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer today. It hits differently. It's very much of its time.

 

[jaime]

This happens with a lot of shows that rely on current pop culture. Try watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer today. It hits differently. It's very much of its time.

Yup. Though to a much lesser extent even in Buffy.
And yet it doesn’t really usually happen to Who very much, nor Star Trek.

 

[jaime]

Giant CGI creature or go big or go home CGI splurge ( giant mass of daleks or cybermen invading central London)

With a reality ending threat to top off RTD’s kitchen sink mentality



Compared to Moffats first season helming the show

Again all of reality is collapsing but the entire cast spends 75 percent of “ the big bang” inside a museum

A little more scaled back from the previous past seasons

And the kicker?
The threat in the Big Bang felt more tangible.

Side note: I used to think RTDs kitchen sink mentality refereed to kitchen sink dramas, but of course it refers to everything but…

 

[JD]

Kitchen sink dramas?

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.

I have to disagree with you again here, I've never seen Bridgerton, and know absolutely nothing about it, and I still really enjoyed Rogue. Hell, I didn't even know Bridgerton was set in the same era as Rogue, until people started talking about it in relation to Rogue.

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.

I don't know, it seemed to that most of the reactions to the relationship when it first aired were pretty positive. I know I liked it.

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.

How so? I don't remember seeing that kind of criticism when it first aired, but I could have easily missed it.

 

[The Wormhole]

Compared to Moffats first season helming the show

Again all of reality is collapsing but the entire cast spends 75 percent of “ the big bang” inside a museum

Mostly because Moffat tends to write the characters delivering monologues in which they talk about what's happening rather than showing it happen. And yes, I'm aware RTD has committed this sin quite a bit as well.

 

[Steve Roby]

Kitchen sink dramas?

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KitchenSinkDrama

Early in his career, in the 1990s, RTD was for a short time a writer on Coronation Street, the soap opera about a working class neighborhood in the north of England. It started out very much in the tradition of the British working class misery tales that became known as kitchen sink drama, though by RTD's time it was capable of being somewhat sillier (he wrote the movie special Viva Las Vegas, in which, yes, some of the characters went to Las Vegas). A lot of past, present, and future Corrie cast members have been in Doctor Who, like Millie Gibson (Ruby Sunday).

 

[JD]

Ok, thanks for the explanation.

 

[jaime]

Kitchen sink dramas?

I have to disagree with you again here, I've never seen Bridgerton, and know absolutely nothing about it, and I still really enjoyed Rogue. Hell, I didn't even know Bridgerton was set in the same era as Rogue, until people started talking about it in relation to Rogue.

I don't know, it seemed to that most of the reactions to the relationship when it first aired were pretty positive. I know I liked it.

How so? I don't remember seeing that kind of criticism when it first aired, but I could have easily missed it.

As to the first — the episode itself mentions Bridgerton multiple times by name. It is in many ways a parody of a parody. Which rarely work. And Rogue was going *hard* at emulating aspects of Bridgerton. The music for example. (Has to be said, when Who uses modern or contemporary music, and not as part of a historical setting, it’s fifty fifty at best how that is going to come over as the episode ages. The Britney iPod joke in End of the World is already reaching the end of its shelf life, and is past it for anyone younger than fifteen already I suspect.)

As to the second, I think the reactions that were positive tended to be more about the representation it represented than anything about the relationship or portrayal itself. And even when it was… well, people used to grasping at straws will big up any tiny thing sometimes. I can understand that. There was some positivity at the kind of… silliness and humour of the kylie scene. But whether thats laughing at, or laughing with, is difficult to define there I think. It was just… red meat to a certain kind of fan (especially when combined with the next point) and I don’t really think of the LGBQT Crew when I say that. Was there a cottaging joke about the Tardis or am I misremembering the dialogue, and it simply drifts close to that without being overt?

And to the third, there was a *lot* of speculation before the episode even aired that Johnathan Groyff (I am remembering his name right I hope) was literally playing a recast pseudo-regenerated Captain Jack, so similar were the character descriptions. And there is *very* little to separate the characters, and as I jokingly say, even the actors backgrounds are remarkably similar.

 

[jaime]

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KitchenSinkDrama

Early in his career, in the 1990s, RTD was for a short time a writer on Coronation Street, the soap opera about a working class neighborhood in the north of England. It started out very much in the tradition of the British working class misery tales that became known as kitchen sink drama, though by RTD's time it was capable of being somewhat sillier (he wrote the movie special Viva Las Vegas, in which, yes, some of the characters went to Las Vegas). A lot of past, present, and future Corrie cast members have been in Doctor Who, like Millie Gibson (Ruby Sunday).

And soap operas are so called because they were seen as the televisual offspring of the gritty stage plays known as kitchen sink dramas.

 

[VDCNI]

Rogue was great and well received.

You didn't need to know anything about Bridgerton to enjoy it.

There was no particular backlash or bad reaction to the character of Rogue outside the usual quarters you'd expect to object to the character.

 

[jaime]

Rogue was great and well received.

You didn't need to know anything about Bridgerton to enjoy it.

There was no particular backlash or bad reaction to the character of Rogue outside the usual quarters you'd expect to object to the character.

(A) ymmv, but that’s how these things work.
(B) probably not, but it doesn’t mean that the episode as presented on screen wasn’t leaning hard into the Bridgerton thing, and there are aspects which depend on at least a passing familiarity.
(C) there are ‘usual quarters’ and there are ‘usual quarters’ and people will put anything into that definition that they don’t agree with, just to shut down disagreement. And it must be truly remarkable a character in Who history that was universally loved without any criticism or bad reaction. Even the Doctor doesn’t get that status usually.