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Rockne O'Bannon

I fail to see the lack of love for the current Who - it's miles ahead of the Tenant / Davies version. They have the best showrunner and best Doctor. And Karen Gillan !

RTD did a great job bringing back Who, but he also wrote the very worst episodes.

OK. you have to pay attention now, but that's no bad thing...
 
If Farscape 'made' SciFi, why did they dump it so unceremoniously?

Loyalty is not the first thing you think of when you think of Hollywood. :rommie:

Skiffy has realized they can make more cost-effective shows by taking the USA Network style of quirky, character-based cop shows and adding sci fi window dressing. That type of show is cheap to make and there's a healthy audience. So that, plus ghost hunting "reality TV" and wresting, is more than enough to fill their schedule. They don't actually need to make space opera, or anything remotely interesting, to be quite profitable. Don't look to them to do anything worthwhile for the near future or maybe ever again. Mediocrity been beddy beddy good to them.

O'Bannon's chief positive attribute is looney creative vision, so he needs his own show, and definitely one where he doesn't have to tame anything down for kids. I keep reading rumors that he's working on this or that show - an Alien Nation remake (ehhh) and some daffy video-game-TV crossover called Defiance (probably will be the latest in a very long string of failed attempts to inject interactivity into TV shows).
 
Why is it that fans can never be happy? They always wish for the producer to run the show who isn't...

Because like any fans of anything they are fickle beyond fickle. I've seen people who have been fans of a show for years then one bad episode and they are ready to jump ship. I swear, those people would make great network executives.
 
I'm sorry, but the complaints/whining I'm hearing are about Moffat's Who being "too complicated" and "inacessible" and "ridiculous"... and you want it to be more like Farscape, of all things?

I mean, I loved Farscape, but... :wtf:
 
I'm sorry, but the complaints/whining I'm hearing are about Moffat's Who being "too complicated" and "inacessible" and "ridiculous"... and you want it to be more like Farscape, of all things?

I mean, I loved Farscape, but... :wtf:

Yeah, pretty weird. Let's throw the LOST writers in there, too, while we're at it!:lol:
 
Showrunner doesn't have to write all the episodes. Usually they don't. Moffat's just a workaholic.
 
Moffat doesn't write all the episodes though....he writes the key story arc related episodes it would seem and yeah "Farscape" was pretty wacky and convoluted at times even more than Who has been under The Moff.
 
Showrunner doesn't have to write all the episodes. Usually they don't. Moffat's just a workaholic.

He's writing about the same proportion as RTD isn't he?

Anyway we all know Chibnall will be the next show runner, so best keep Moffat for as long as possible! :lol:
 
He's writing about the same proportion as RTD isn't he?
Pretty much exactly - RTD wrote 5 episodes per year (except the first season where he wrote 7), plus Christmas specials. Moffat wrote 5 episodes per year (except the first season where he wrote 6), plus Christmas specials.
 
Showrunner doesn't have to write all the episodes. Usually they don't. Moffat's just a workaholic.

They don't usually write all the episodes themselves, but the showrunners do have the option of doing extensive re-writes of the scripts of someone else. I don't know how Moffat handles this part. RTD would do this freguently, though there were a few writers who's scripts he didn't interfere with. Moffat was one of them.
 
Because like any fans of anything they are fickle beyond fickle. I've seen people who have been fans of a show for years then one bad episode and they are ready to jump ship. I swear, those people would make great network executives.

Yeah, many Trekkies are like that too. And I think it was David Tennant who joked during an interview that one of the first questions he was asked when he took the part is "when are you leaving?"

Moffat has been great for the show, RTD made the general public care about the show (which annoyed some people who preferred having Doctor Who their own private niche fandom). And anyone who thinks they've abandoned the original series hasn't watched the show otherwise they'd have noticed Sarah Jane, the steeped-in-history Doctor's Wife, and maybe they were so disgusted they didn't notice Graeme Harper's directoral credit on a number of key episodes.

Back on the original point, no I don't want to see O'Bannon as showrunner, but I wouldn't mind seeing him write an episode if the BBC were to ever open the door to non-British writers (that's not quite fair; it's more likely the writer's unions that wouldn't allow that). A more likely scenario (start writing those letters) is to see IDW and Boom! collaborate on a Farscape/Doctor Who crossover special in the comics. (Keith DeCandido has written for both Farscape and the Doctor Who franchise - short stories in the latter - so that could work.)

My assumption is Gatiss for next showrunner, with Whithouse a possibility if Being Human is finished by then. Outside odds though are favoring Neil Gaiman based on The Doctor's Wife; hey, a year or so ago there were people calling it a myth that he'd ever write for Doctor Who because they couldn't afford him!

But I think it'll be Gatiss because - criticize all you want - they have so far been picking showrunners with longstanding connections with the series: RTD was a lifelong fan who wrote a Virgin New Adventures novel; Moffat likewise except he wrote short stories for Decalog as well as the well-received Curse of Fatal Death spoof in the 90s; Gatiss not only is a Doctor Who novelist of longstanding, but he was also (alongside Nicholas Briggs, Bill Baggs and Keith Barnfather) one of the producers/writers/directors who kept Doctor Who-related productions alive during the 1990s through his involvement with spin-offs such as PROBE.

PS. Speaking of Farscape, just found out on the Sarah Jane Adventures Series 5 thread that the villain in the season premiere was played by the same actress who played Teeg in Farscape (she was the blonde officer who served under Crais in the first season and got her neck broken for the effort).

Alex
 
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The worst thing about Gatiss is that it isn't that I think he's a bad writer, I just think he's a bad Who writer. Seriously 4 episodes now and there's only been one I really liked (and that was the first one). I also think that whoever gets the job after Moffat needs to have a clear idea about what the show should be/the direction of travel, and I'm not sure of Gatiss' production credits (if any) whereas Moffat had done a fair few other things.

Whithouse is a definite possibility I think. And I was only joking about Chibnall (I hope. The guy has quite an impressive CV, god knows how!)
 
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