The Trilogy of the slightly dull monks? I don’t remember titles anymore xD
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The Trilogy of the slightly dull monks? I don’t remember titles anymore xD
Well, I meant which episode specifically were the Cybermen suppose to appear in.
That one. The leaked designs were for cybermen in pyramid ships etc. Interstitial cybermen designs that strongly resembled the monks.
I see what you did there!
Something I've been wondering as a possible reason why Chibnall's Doctor Who has fallen so flat, I wonder if he's not really a fan of sci-fi/fantasy outside of Doctor Who? A lot of the episodes done during his run have felt like they're from someone who doesn't really care for SF&F writing what he thinks SF&F is supposed to be. Compare it to Broadchurch, which is in a genre Chibnall is genuinely interested in. Indeed, Broadchurch started as a frustrated Chibnall just deciding to forget things like demographics and appeasing execs and all that and just write something he would be entertained by. Anyway, the difference in quality between Broadchurch and Chibnall's DW is staggering, to the point it's genuinely hard to believe the same guy is behind the two. Indeed, I suspect character drama is more Chibnall's bread and butter. IMO, Torchwood improved immensely in the second season when they switched to more character based storylines.
Which is unfortunate, if true. Doctor Who is a versatile and malleable setting where anything goes. Chibnall had the opportunity to make his Doctor Who more character based and possibly knock it out of the park in terms of quality but he instead squandered the opportunity with a bunch of generic and formulaic SF&F staples.
Which is unfortunate, if true. Doctor Who is a versatile and malleable setting where anything goes. Chibnall had the opportunity to make his Doctor Who more character based and possibly knock it out of the park in terms of quality but he instead squandered the opportunity with a bunch of generic and formulaic SF&F staples.
Ah, okay. That makes for that particular story. A pity Moffat changed it.
Well, like I said before, "Extremis" still works on its own so I'll just keep watching it and pretend the other two don't exist.
I don’t know, Davies started off with Coronation Street and Queer as Folk, Moffat with Press Gang. Nick Meyer didn’t do much sci-fi until TWOK and the MCU is full of writers and directors who went from indie stuff to genre adaptations.
I thought S1 of Broadchurch was great but S2 was dire, with S3 somewhere in between. Maybe the issue isn’t the genre, it’s just that he’s not an especially good writer.
Well, like I said, I thought he did a pretty good job with the second season of Torchwood, though I'm probably in a minority there. The Doctor Who episodes he did in the RTD and Moffat eras weren't bad either
I'd agree that Chibnall isn't best suited to high-concept stuff, stuff that requires Big Ideas and lots of imagination, but I'd also add this: he really seems to struggle under pressure, and the weight of expectations.
Torchwood was a DW spin-off featuring a popular character, and quite highly anticipated as a result, so a fair bit of pressure on it.
Broadchurch S1 was, as @The Wormhole notes, just Chibnall doing his own thing on his own time, so no pressure at all; it proved to be a huge success, and thus a huge weight of expectation fell on S2.
Show-running Doctor Who is all the pressure, all the time.
You honestly have to wonder if TV's even the right place for him, considering. Maybe if he stuck to one-off concepts, always moving on to new things rather than trying to bottle lightning twice.
Torchwood was a DW spin-off featuring a popular character, and quite highly anticipated as a result, so a fair bit of pressure on it.
Broadchurch S1 was, as @The Wormhole notes, just Chibnall doing his own thing on his own time, so no pressure at all; it proved to be a huge success, and thus a huge weight of expectation fell on S2.
Show-running Doctor Who is all the pressure, all the time.
You honestly have to wonder if TV's even the right place for him, considering. Maybe if he stuck to one-off concepts, always moving on to new things rather than trying to bottle lightning twice.
I get the impression Chibnall was able to spend a lot of time polishing Broadchurch (which one of these days I must watch) which likely helped, plus he only had one story to tell rather than multiple ones. Maybe he is just better suited to that kind of storytelling.
Part of Torchwood's problem in the early days was it felt rushed. The second season was an improvement, partially because of the focus on character, partially because it lightened up whereas S1 had been very po faced, but also I suspect the writers had more time.
My main problem with CC going into his tenure was that he was a very average Who writer. The Silurian 2 parter was ok, and I quite enjoyed The Power of Three and Dinos on a Spaceship, but he'd never knocked it out the park the way RTD or Moffat did (or even the way people like Whithouse did). There's a strong argument that for series 1-10 the best episode of every season was probably written by RTD or the Moff. People may disagree but I don't think the best episode of either Chibnall season was actually written by him.
In terms of non-sci-fi writers I see Sally Wainright's name cropping up a lot. Why not, she's clearly a top drawer writer who's created three (at least) shows that have been successful and there's always the possibility that she could attract someone like Nicola Walker or Suranne Jones to the role (I'd prefer Walker who's been high on my Who list for a long time, but Jones would also be a very good Doctor).
Part of Torchwood's problem in the early days was it felt rushed. The second season was an improvement, partially because of the focus on character, partially because it lightened up whereas S1 had been very po faced, but also I suspect the writers had more time.
My main problem with CC going into his tenure was that he was a very average Who writer. The Silurian 2 parter was ok, and I quite enjoyed The Power of Three and Dinos on a Spaceship, but he'd never knocked it out the park the way RTD or Moffat did (or even the way people like Whithouse did). There's a strong argument that for series 1-10 the best episode of every season was probably written by RTD or the Moff. People may disagree but I don't think the best episode of either Chibnall season was actually written by him.
In terms of non-sci-fi writers I see Sally Wainright's name cropping up a lot. Why not, she's clearly a top drawer writer who's created three (at least) shows that have been successful and there's always the possibility that she could attract someone like Nicola Walker or Suranne Jones to the role (I'd prefer Walker who's been high on my Who list for a long time, but Jones would also be a very good Doctor).
I've absolutely hated everything I've ever seen by her - admittedly limited to (sadly) all of Last Tango In Halifax, Happy Valley (which I tried a couple but refused to watch any more of) and a few bits elsewhere. I simply can't abide her shows.
However, I'd definitely be up for her showrunning something she didn't create, like Who. I think her sensibilities overlayed on the structure of Who could be just what it needs.
And Sarah Lancashire would probably come with her.
A criticism that really landed for me of Chibnall's era that he keeps having the Doctor face off against real-world problems, and then be powerless to stop them because the Doctor is imaginary. She can't save the world from global warming or self-absorbed widowed fathers or whatever. I'd expect his intent is that the moral should be a "the power is yours" kind of thing, motivating the audience to action, but having even the Doctor be unable to do anything about massive challenges tends towards being demoralizing rather than inspiring. Not that "Doctor Who isn't going to solve all your problems, you have to grow up and go out there and use fewer plastic products by yourself" is even, on the most superficial level, an effective way to frame the thought.
The conventional science fiction action-adventure take would be to have some sort of metaphor for the real problems happening with space aliens or magic technology or something that the Doctor can solve. The Doctor can't get rid of fossil fuel subsidies, but they can defeat a conspiracy to make cars that make the atmosphere unlivable as a prelude to Sontaran invasion. They can't stop ongoing wars and ethnic strife in the real world, but they can set up a fantasy crucible that requires the leaders of the Zygons and humans to negotiate by offering the opportunity to skip directly to the devastation and heartbreak of a war on a coin-flip.
I've mentioned before the take that Moffat's era sometimes seems like a preemptive refutation of Chibnall's, but Moffat's Thirteenth Doctor lockdown story actually did take the theme that the Doctor isn't real and can't actually save the world and executed on it in a much more deft and effective way.
I do hope that someone else can find a more effective overall schtick for the Thirteenth Doctor in the spin-off media. "The Doctor who's powerless in the real world" seems even worse to me than that period where the Eighth Doctor was just "the Doctor who always gets amnesia."
Yes, this. Science fiction in general (IMO) works best when it uses metaphor and *makes you think*. It's part of the advantage of the genre, as Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry and Ron Moore and the DW creators understood.
To me, Kerblam! is where I knew the era was in deep, deep trouble. Its not that I don't get the intent of the story as conceptualized... but the way that it comes off at the end is vastly different than how it should have been and antithetical to all of DW that has come before it. Its always difficult to portray her as the antiestablishment hero while also helping the status quo AND assist it reach an enlightenment stage. But the end of that story basically has the Doctor stand up for the corporation, and that's just wrong.
Ironically, this sums up my take on RTD. His character stuff was first rate, even down to tiny things like Nine and Rose getting chips, but he was a horrible sci-fi writer !
And one of the reasons *why* it was so bad was because of the messaging strapped to it. If it hadn’t have had all of the ‘job quota’ stuff added, and the daft speech (which reads like a defence of a social media company) then it would have been part way to not being as shit.
The use of Fam in the show never bothered me, because it's the Doctor. She's an alien, not really caught up in the slang and lingo. I found it endearing.
When I see someone use it online or hear it in person it makes me cringe, but not in this show.
I've seen a lot of younger fans use the term to describe the main character group though, which I guess I'm fine with.
When I see someone use it online or hear it in person it makes me cringe, but not in this show.
I've seen a lot of younger fans use the term to describe the main character group though, which I guess I'm fine with.
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They all use it wrong though. That’s what makes it so excruciating. That and it always used pretty much by itself. There’s no other slang being used. (Ryan calling the police the feds excepted) I don’t even know if it’s being used in Sheffield. And where is Graham from? When did he move from London?
It’s like the bad old days of BBC Youf speech, like what nearly saddled Ace back in the day. At least she used Wicked right. Not like this lot in the current series who make Brigadier Bambera look like Stormzy.
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