Is the explanation not simply that they want people to subscribe to D+, rather than see Star Wars on free tv?
Spoilers Russell T. Davies Returns to Doctor Who as New Showrunner
- Thread starter Allyn Gibson
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Sure, but they also own ABC, so they're not ready to completely give up on broadcast TV. Having one Star Wars TV series on regular TV might draw viewers to the other shows on Disney+.
The 12th Doctor rocks up with his sonic shades, "Oh Clara, I just popped into Glastonbury 2025, sang on stage with Franz Ferdinand, no biggie"
And then the 15th Doctor showed up to introduce Jade
And then the 15th Doctor showed up to introduce Jade
Capaldi looks like he stepped out of Series 8... which was eleven years ago. Time has gone weird.
This will sound insensitive to Jodie, but I'm just being honest: He should've stayed, as the Tom Baker of the new era, and the Chibnall era, even if it was functionally the exact same, would've been more easy to take in with Peter Capaldi as the Doctor.
Perhaps the definitive Doctor Who.
I'll be honest too. He could have been a definitive Doctor if Moffat had provided better writing and not wasted a couple of years on arcs like "Am I an asshole?" and "Does hybrid actually mean anything in English?" Moffat took too long to figure out how best to use Capaldi as the Doctor. Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall were a welcome reset.
I could totally headcanon that! Peter is Ultra Cool.
The 12th doctor- And then I sang with the Scottish rock band named after Franz Ferdinand
I love this comment.
In another place and time.
The Doctor and Clara visit Glastonbury to stop an alien disguised as someone attending Glastonbury
My only tiny criticism of Peter with FF is that he should’ve had a guitar. But beyond that it was great to see, the man is effortlessly cool. And the song still sounds great.
That song always reminds me of the PlayStation, as it was used in PlayStation commercials twenty years ago.
What a load. Are we actually still suggesting the trite line "Capaldi would've been better without series 8 and 9" when those very series are among the show's best? And of course you would welcome the Chibster bullshit as a "welcome reset" because all Chibster really had to offer, besides the ugliest looking TARDIS console room, was more boring, mystery defying lore. But if you weren't negatively disposes against the Hybrid you'd realize that Hell Bent is one of the greatest DW stories ever, as it makes fun of lore revelations and actually focuses on what the show is really all about: The Doctor, and his companion.
Well said.
How can you say that when all the evidence is right there in front of you, the show gained more viewers when Chibnall took over from Moffet, and that rise in viewership continued in leaps and bounds when RTD returned, to the point were the show today is a massive success with streaming services fighting to get the rights to stream it, a 2025 xmas special in the bag, and the 2026 season already filming, with 2027 and 2028 already on order thanks to how confident the BBC are with the fantastic increasing live viewing and iplayer streaming numbers the show has been pulling since Moffet left.... ...........oh wait!!! Lol
It’s quite amazing how much of those Capaldi seasons predict what is coming down the pipe and either does it properly, or sends it up, or both. And then ends on a speech reminding everyone what the point of the Doctor is.
In much the same way, the Smith Era works at turning some RTD things up to eleven, before removing them and showing why they don’t work long term, and even give River a speech about why being in love with the Doctor doesn’t work.
I actually find it quite sad that people suggest all the ‘woke’ stuff they don’t like started with Moffat. The opposite is very much true.
Ah, this will be a well-reasoned and respectful response, I can tell.
No, we're suggesting Capaldi would have been better if Moffat had written him better, and not as an asshole. The Ninth Doctor's attitude towards Mickey was bad enough. Twelve's attitude towards Danny Pink was worse. Twelve has a few personality transplants after that, but they feel like abrupt changes rather than growth or development.
Dark Water/Death in Heaven was a nonsensical mess of pure fantasy with some revelations about how death and the afterlife work in the Doctor Who universe that we'll probably never hear about again. Kill the Moon was also pure fantasy with an obvious abortion subtext that seemed to surprise its creators when people commented on it. The Capaldi era's nosedive in the ratings has been attributed to young fangirls missing Matt Smith, but the way the Doctor and his stories were written seem likely to have been a factor as well.
For most of the first two seasons, what Chibnall was offering was a series of largely standalone Doctor Who stories that weren't part of some timey-wimey arc. It was going back to an older approach in Doctor Who storytelling, where you're getting a complete story this week and then it's another one next week. Flux was obviously different, but due to Covid, the Flux we got wasn't the Flux Chibnall originally planned. He had to deal with the kind of behind the scenes crisis that Moffat and Davies never encountered, so it's not surprising it was a mess.
Moffat making fun of lore is an interesting perspective, considering he built a lot of it.
Not to the general public.
It was when he took over the ratings started to plunge. In particular people seem to have blanked out just how shockingly bad the ratings for his last series were.
If you don't blank that out, you can't blame Chibnall and Whittaker for everything. So it has to be blanked out.
It gets brought up here a few times a year. I'm sure someone has even sent Paramount their pitch.
I was reading the thread on "How Would You End Doctor Who for Good," and after sitting with it and thinking for ten, fifteen minutes, I decided, with both reluctance and certainty, that "The Big Bang" -- yes, the finale to Series 5 -- was the perfect ending for Doctor Who. Oh, I'd miss a lot that came after it, like Capaldi, like "Day of the Doctor," but had Doctor Who ended with Amy remembering the Doctor back into existence, I would have been content. And then maybe around now, the BBC would have found some new producer to give the concept a refresh and a new life.
I'm not Steve, but yes, I think Capaldi would have better off without Series 8 or 9. And Smith would have been better off without Series 6 and 7. That's not to say that there aren't good moments in those series, because there are, and I would miss them. I'd miss Danny Pink. I would miss "The Name of the Doctor." But these series are less than the sum of their parts. Back in 2013, The Atlantic argued that the wrong man was leaving in "The Time of the Doctor" -- Smith instead of Moffat -- and I can't disagree. I think of the argument I've made about Moftis' (Gatfat's?) Sherlock a number of times -- it would have been a brilliant one-series-and-done, I'd think of what might have been had it gone only two series, but after three I no longer cared, and after four any affection I might have had burned on a pyre. Moffat can make a great first album, and after that is a series of difficult second albums, and thirds, and fourths....
I'm slagging on Moffat here, and in cutting off Doctor Who with "The Big Bang," I'd also get rid of Chibnall and Whittaker. I would miss the hell of Whittaker, not because I find her attractive (which I do and have), but because she is genuinely weird, and even if her scripts were poor she was always, effortlessly Doctor-ish. I think I get what Chibnall was going for -- his era feels very CW, very Berlantiverse to me and targetted at that audience -- and it generally works for me in that way, but I can see how that wouldn't work for a lot of people.
Moffat seems to have conceived of the twelfth Doctor as the New Adventures Doctor, a manipulative and dangerous asshole. (Series 8 makes a ton of sense viewed through the NA prism.) Capaldi seems to have conceived of the twelfth Doctor as "Matt Smith but old," and eventually Capaldi was able to bring Moffat around, but it took time.
For a while, Titan's Doctor Who ongoing comics -- Ten, Eleven, and Twelve -- were all selling 10k a month. Then they did the Four Doctors crossover in 2015, which sold 15k an issue, and after that sales crashed.
I feel like something happened in 2015, like maybe the long hangover from the 50th-Anniversary finally dissipated, and Doctor Who has never recovered its popularity.
