Russell T. Davies Returns to Doctor Who as New Showrunner

[Mr Awe]

If there truly is a controversial change to the mythology, I'm a bit worried that RTD is misreading the room. After the Timeless Child, many people just want stable, high quality DW and no more big changes for the time being. That's where I'm at.

And I mean changes in terms of the overall mythology specifically. Having a black, gay man as the Doctor is a non-issue.

Yeah, I know, there are those who like the Timeless Child, but on an overall basis that doesn't seem to be the case.

I guess we'll find out soon! If it's just a switch to more fantasy, that's probably fine. We've had that before. But RTD's seeming glee with a "controversial change" and fans being "annoyed" leave me a little unsettled to be honest.

Could it be related to 14 invoking superstition at the edge of the Universe?

 

[The Nth Doctor]

If he wants to really shock us RTD should do a pure historical!

Shock me with delight!

...but it'll never happen. Davies is firmly in the camp of aliens and monsters in historicals, alas.

It’s amazing how quickly people turned on RTD

They were so excited about his return but then they see his comments about Davros and “ a male-presenting Time Lord will never understand“ and the pronouns scene

“Welp. RTD’s ruined WHO now”

I'm not even remotely surprised. It's the same vicious cycle that's been turning for decades.

 

[kirk55555]

Details on the Christmas special musical number, it's called "The Goblin Song" and is being released as a Children In Need Charity Record next week (December 11th). It'll also have a music video which will include footage from The Church On Ruby Road


https://www.doctorwho.tv/news-and-features/doctor-who-releases-christmas-single-the-goblin-song

Bold of them to announce that Ncuti's first episode is automatically the worst first episode for a Doctor ever. Still, I'd rather be informed that I'll need to mute my TV for several minutes and not be surprised by a shitty musical number. Nothing like purposefully sabotaging a new Doctor's first appearance, this might even be worse then Colin Baker's first appearance, and his Doctor tried to choke his companion to death in his first episode.

The Ghost of JNT really found it easier to whisper to RTD and Chibs didn’t he.

RTD and Chibnall aren't fit to be mentioned in the same breath as JNT. Regardless of his faults, JNT cared about Doctor Who and didn't consider it his personal plaything, his problems mostly came about because there was no one willing to replace him after he'd done enough, combined with the head of the BBC being an outright asshole. RTD and Chibnall both just wanted Doctor who to be their show, and fuck all the people who came before them, and the fans of Doctor Who in general.

It’s amazing how quickly people turned on RTD

They were so excited about his return but then they see his comments about Davros and “ a male-presenting Time Lord will never understand“ and the pronouns scene

“Welp. RTD’s ruined WHO now”

I mean, some people are idiots, but you're trying to paint all criticism as coming from the "anti SJW" crowd, which is bullshit. Yeah, The Star Beast had cringe dialog that no one in real life would ever say and that scene with Donna and her daughter made no sense, but most normal people just shrug that off.

The Davros thing was bullshit though, literally no one was complaining about him, RTD just pulled complaints out of his ass. Luckily there is literally no chance that the real Davros won't be coming back, RTD won't be around forever and Davros is too iconic to make into a generic nazi scientist. He'll be scooting around in his evil wheelchair again before too long.

A lot of people are turning on RTD because he's basically blowing up the show for his own ego, just like Chibnall did. He's saying a bunch of stupid shit, outright trying to antagonize people, and he's acting like Doctor who is his own original show and fuck everyone that came before him.

Anyone that complains about the LGBTQ+ elements and stuff like that you can easily ignore, they're worthless assholes. But RTD is doing a lot to be criticized just as the showrunner of Doctor Who, and whether you agree with it or not you can't just paint all criticism as coming from the "anti-woke" morons.

 

[jaime]

Bold of them to announce that Ncuti's first episode is automatically the worst first episode for a Doctor ever. Still, I'd rather be informed that I'll need to mute my TV for several minutes and not be surprised by a shitty musical number. Nothing like purposefully sabotaging a new Doctor's first appearance, this might even be worse then Colin Baker's first appearance, and his Doctor tried to choke his companion to death in his first episode.



RTD and Chibnall aren't fit to be mentioned in the same breath as JNT. Regardless of his faults, JNT cared about Doctor Who and didn't consider it his personal plaything, his problems mostly came about because there was no one willing to replace him after he'd done enough, combined with the head of the BBC being an outright asshole. RTD and Chibnall both just wanted Doctor who to be their show, and fuck all the people who came before them, and the fans of Doctor Who in general.



I mean, some people are idiots, but you're trying to paint all criticism as coming from the "anti SJW" crowd, which is bullshit. Yeah, The Star Beast had cringe dialog that no one in real life would ever say and that scene with Donna and her daughter made no sense, but most normal people just shrug that off.

The Davros thing was bullshit though, literally no one was complaining about him, RTD just pulled complaints out of his ass. Luckily there is literally no chance that the real Davros won't be coming back, RTD won't be around forever and Davros is too iconic to make into a generic nazi scientist. He'll be scooting around in his evil wheelchair again before too long.

A lot of people are turning on RTD because he's basically blowing up the show for his own ego, just like Chibnall did. He's saying a bunch of stupid shit, outright trying to antagonize people, and he's acting like Doctor who is his own original show and fuck everyone that came before him.

Anyone that complains about the LGBTQ+ elements and stuff like that you can easily ignore, they're worthless assholes. But RTD is doing a lot to be criticized just as the showrunner of Doctor Who, and whether you agree with it or not you can't just paint all criticism as coming from the "anti-woke" morons.

I was thinking more in terms of JNT being rather fond of a bit of stunt casting, media cosying, and also would likely have loved trying to get a Who single on Top of the Pops.
Though he would never have done a musical. Not sober. Delta and the Bannermen was about the limit on that.
The Happiness Patrol does often seem unusually prescient.

 

[The Wormhole]

-A musical episode
-An episode with no dialogue at all?

Okay, RTD, we get it, you're a Buffy fan.

If he wants to really shock us RTD should do a pure historical!

One could certainly hope so. Yeah, I know, it's less likely than a Paul McGann spin-off. Though Chibnall did get close to doing an actual historical a few times and one of them (Demons of the Punjab) was actually alright.

 

[Samurai8472]

"The Goblin Song" is coming soon

 

[VDCNI]

When even Star Trek, which has a much greater claim to be hard science fiction than Who, has produced a musical episode then it feels RTD is over hyping this a bit. It's not like Big Finish haven't put some songs into the odd story either.

Though I feel most of this is just RTD getting publicity for the programme in a crowded media landscape which is fine. Most people aren't childish enough to think a song ruins an episode.

 

[David cgc]

RTD while talking about “The Giggle” drops hints at a something controversial/ it’ll change the doctor forever type of thing

Stay tuned for the in-vision commentary for The Giggle. as Russel will lay out his new controversial vision for the program

https://twitter.com/tvukzone/status/1732436492465684761

Spoiler: The controversial new lore

So, this is about the bigeneration. The revelation reserved for the commentary (also discussed on the podcast aftershow) is that in RTD's mind, the bigeneration event retroactively caused all the previous regenerations to become bigenerations, so duplicates of the Doctor's old incarnation were produced every time they transformed into a new one. The Doctor as seen in the "Tales of the TARDIS" framing stories are these bigenerated Doctors who have been left behind when "some new man saunters off." (I don't know how I feel about RTD literalizing the Doctor's cynical and oddly self-deprecating take on how regenerating feels from "The End of Time"). I believe that also increases our Tennant count by two, bringing the total to five. Hell, let's make it six and say the Doctor pre- and post-"Journey's End" are different incarnations.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

It's legit awful. And unless this idea is literally expanded further I would happily just restrain the bi-regeneration concept to The Giggle and nowhere further.

 

[Qonundrum]

Most people aren't childish enough to think a song ruins an episode.

From ALLEGEDLY one of the worst episodes made - It depends on whom you ask, and when, of course.

 

[Samurai8472]

Preview of the Goblin song

 

[kirk55555]

Ok I'm still not big on the Goblin song, but after loving

Spoiler: The Giggle

The Toymaker's musical rampage

I kind of have to give RTD the goblin song, even if I don't think its going to be anywhere near as good a scene. I do retain my earlier complaint about what he did to Davros though, and the fact that he's too dismissive of the parts of the show that he didn't directly make.

Still, after The Giggle I'm very excited for the show going forward. Like I said in another thread nothing is perfect, I'm sure I'll get annoyed by some stuff going forward, but I haven't been this optimistic for Doctor Who in almost a decade.

 

[Qonundrum]

I was NOT expecting the Goblin song to be good at all as there's only one I ever liked (Capaldi's finale), but I decided to give it a watch. This feels new, has a confident verve, and is so refreshingly weird, and in a palatable way*.

I adore warped takes on this - the POV of other species... so to see the group of goblins doing a ritual so that king goblin there can eat... that's cool in of itself, but then I saw the calendar... this is for a Christmas special?! All while everyone's at the table eating their Christmas ham and pudding? The juxtaposition - I love this! More please, whee!

Now if the whole episode is as tasty as that morsel, or in the same ballpark by the franks, am keeping my fingers crossed for more spicy scenes, sung by Spice Girls since they and salt were mentioned last time. If nothing else, this scene alone will elevate it regardless. The Doctor saves the day - and in a novel way. I love it.

* Yep, a piping hot bowl of even more unsavory puns are coming... ​

 

[DigificWriter]

Spoiler: The controversial new lore

So, this is about the bigeneration. The revelation reserved for the commentary (also discussed on the podcast aftershow) is that in RTD's mind, the bigeneration event retroactively caused all the previous regenerations to become bigenerations, so duplicates of the Doctor's old incarnation were produced every time they transformed into a new one. The Doctor as seen in the "Tales of the TARDIS" framing stories are these bigenerated Doctors who have been left behind when "some new man saunters off." (I don't know how I feel about RTD literalizing the Doctor's cynical and oddly self-deprecating take on how regenerating feels from "The End of Time"). I believe that also increases our Tennant count by two, bringing the total to five. Hell, let's make it six and say the Doctor pre- and post-"Journey's End" are different incarnations.

RTD can say whatever he wants, and people can either 'take it or leave it' because of how Doctor Who works as an IP.

It's legit awful. And unless this idea is literally expanded further I would happily just restrain the bi-regeneration concept to The Giggle and nowhere further.

That's the good thing about Doctor Who: as fans, we're not beholden to accepting RTD's idea about retroactive split regeneration (which doesn't actually work without some serious fanwank).

 

[David cgc]

RTD can say whatever he wants, and people can either 'take it or leave it' because of how Doctor Who works as an IP.

That's the good thing about Doctor Who not having an officially established and recognized Canon; you're not beholden to accepting RTD's idea (which doesn't actually work without some serious fanwank).

Well, that'll be tremendously handy when I become the head writer and producer of Doctor Who, but for the time being RTD has a touch more say in what's going to happen in the future of Doctor Who (indeed, what's already happened, with more than a season already filmed).

 

[DigificWriter]

Well, that'll be tremendously handy when I become the head writer and producer of Doctor Who, but for the time being RTD has a touch more say in what's going to happen in the future of Doctor Who (indeed, what's already happened, with more than a season already filmed).

His explanation is purely his own, though, and we as fans aren't beholden to accepting what he says.

 

[Serveaux]

His explanation is purely his own, though, and we as fans aren't beholden to accepting what he says.

But it's an official statement by a producer. They never mislead you in the press.

 

[DigificWriter]

But it's an official statement by a producer. They never mislead you in the press.

There's a difference between Word-of-God statements about the production process and how said process intersects with and impacts the narrative and Word-of-God comments about the interpretation of the narrative... especially when it comes to Doctor Who, an IP where every narrative choice that has ever been made both counts and does not count simultaneously.

 

[Samurai8472]

During a comic panel in Scottland Christopher Eccelston noted he will only return if these people are gone

Here's the highlighted part

https://twitter.com/APZonerunner/status/1734497557584244929


"Sack Russel T. Davies, sack Jane Tranter, sack Phill Collinson, sack Julie Gardner and I'll come back."

 

[The Wormhole]

Would it be inappropriate to point out there was an entire decade in which all four were not involved with the show at all, and that Eccleston was invited back during that timeframe and he refused?