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

[EnderAKH]

Here would be my advice to any new showrunner taking over Doctor Who: Do what every script editor who worked on the show has ever done. Ignore whatever they don't like or think doesn't work, and use whatever they like. If I may borrow a phrase from the show, Doctor Who continuity is a big ball of wibbley wobbley, timey wimey... stuff.

 

[TRON JA307020]

You're so insufferable.

Its not my fault that Davies failed. Well he gets one more episode. At least you have that to enjoy.

 

[camdudetenger2018]

after seening some resent posts on this thread about infamous the timeless child

here is a theory when the last doctor regenerated to rose tyler what if that is the timeless child and the bad wolf

 

[bdub76]

after seening some resent posts on this thread about infamous the timeless child

here is a theory when the last doctor regenerated to rose tyler what if that is the timeless child and the bad wolf

The ending leaves very little to be desired.

Time to rewatch Survival.

 

[oktay]

The much better originsl series are still excellent. Do you agree or disagree? If we just move on they'll continue destroying the franchise. Just like star trek. The good news is less and less peoole are watching the newer badly written crap that they'll most likely make changes sooner or later once they change show runners.

I keep telling myself not to write this, but I think people who think like you are fools. Because you don't just put aside something you're watching and aren't happy with and continue. Star Trek and Doctor Who continued by constantly retconning. Also, the First Doctor wasn't erased. Even if not in Turkey, there are soap operas that have been running for 50-60-70 years. How do they continue? By retconning. Furthermore, even if the directors and writers of the series you love change, the newcomers still won't be able to please everyone. Because in this age of hatred, everyone hates everything. And writers in Hollywood have become terrible. Even the writers of big series struggle to satisfy the fan base of those series. Because while Hollywood and the British film and TV series industry are becoming increasingly liberal, Americans and Britons are becoming extremely conservative. And right-wing scum on the internet control the masses, spreading right-wing and anti-woke nonsense.

 

[jaime]

I keep telling myself not to write this, but I think people who think like you are fools. Because you don't just put aside something you're watching and aren't happy with and continue. Star Trek and Doctor Who continued by constantly retconning. Also, the First Doctor wasn't erased. Even if not in Turkey, there are soap operas that have been running for 50-60-70 years. How do they continue? By retconning. Furthermore, even if the directors and writers of the series you love change, the newcomers still won't be able to please everyone. Because in this age of hatred, everyone hates everything. And writers in Hollywood have become terrible. Even the writers of big series struggle to satisfy the fan base of those series. Because while Hollywood and the British film and TV series industry are becoming increasingly liberal, Americans and Britons are becoming extremely conservative. And right-wing scum on the internet control the masses, spreading right-wing and anti-woke nonsense.

I think that’s half the picture, viewed through one lense.
Need the full spectacles (rose tinting optional)

 

[TRON JA307020]

I keep telling myself not to write this, but I think people who think like you are fools. Because you don't just put aside something you're watching and aren't happy with and continue. Star Trek and Doctor Who continued by constantly retconning. Also, the First Doctor wasn't erased. Even if not in Turkey, there are soap operas that have been running for 50-60-70 years. How do they continue? By retconning. Furthermore, even if the directors and writers of the series you love change, the newcomers still won't be able to please everyone. Because in this age of hatred, everyone hates everything. And writers in Hollywood have become terrible. Even the writers of big series struggle to satisfy the fan base of those series. Because while Hollywood and the British film and TV series industry are becoming increasingly liberal, Americans and Britons are becoming extremely conservative. And right-wing scum on the internet control the masses, spreading right-wing and anti-woke nonsense.

To me its about quality of story and keeping things on track. Its not about left or right specifically. Im very much a stickler for canon ill admit. Story canon and visual canon. When its broken too much or unnecessarily I can no longer enjoy the show. Its always on my mind. Stsr Trek and Dr. Who have been changing canon to try and get new viewers. Its not working. They are losing viewers. Total reboots would be the easiest way. Leave the original properties alone for original fans to enjoy and reboot them for potential new fans. That would be better

 

[oktay]

To me its about quality of story and keeping things on track. Its not about left or right specifically. Im very much a stickler for canon ill admit. Story canon and visual canon. When its broken too much or unnecessarily I can no longer enjoy the show. Its always on my mind. Stsr Trek and Dr. Who have been changing canon to try and get new viewers. Its not working. They are losing viewers. Total reboots would be the easiest way. Leave the original properties alone for original fans to enjoy and reboot them for potential new fans. That would be better

I agree with this point.

 

[The Wormhole]

So destroy the continuity and canon that came before so new fans can jump into it? Why? Why mess with the existing continuity so we can make ut "accessible" to young fans?

Terrance Dicks himself once said "continuity is only whatever I can remember." And he's one of the franchise's most celebrated writers. RTD said in his book The Writer's Tale "it it's a choice between serving the story or serving continuity, serving the story should win every time."

Doctor Who is not a franchise that concerns itself with continuity and canon. It never has and it never should.

 

[JD]

The whole series is about people screwing around with time travel, so there's always an easy explanation for why things aren't always going to line up perfectly.
Star Trek and Doctor Who are not changing canon, they are simply adding to it. All of the stuff in the earlier seasons and series still happened, the new shows have just been adding more to it.
I read up a little on the Timeless Child, and while I'm not a huge fan of it, it just seems to add a whole lot of unnecessary complications to the Doctor's backstory, and I'm not a big fan of making them some extra special character even before all of the journeys as the Doctor, but I really don't see where it's ruined the character or the show. All it did was add an new backstory to the Doctor, but it didn't destroy anything in the process because everything we've seen and learned about the Doctor's life before the show, and everything we do know about still happened, we just now know that some other stuff happened to them before that. Hartnell and Bradley is still there as the First Doctor, or at least The First Doctor that we met, he just wasn't the first life that this character had. They already introduced the idea of there being other lives that didn't count with The War Doctor, and there might have been a few in Classic Who too.
And it's also the kind of thing is easy to ignore by writers since it all happened at least thousands of years ago, and going by what the TARDIS Wiki says, there's an easy out if someone really wanted to just retcon it away. Going by what the Wiki say, since the whole thing was something The Master stumbled across in the Matrix, you could always just say that he found a way to hack into the Matrix and fake the whole thing, and any references to it outside of the Matrix were all set up by him somehow.
And the same is true of the new Trek shows too, there is nothing that they have introduced that has changed canon, all they've done is add new layers to it. Yes Michael Burnham is a big addition to Spock's backstory, but we never really learned that much about his family or backstory anyways, so it's easy to just stick her right in there.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Terrance Dicks was writing before the invention of the VHS player.

Russell T Davies' opinions on continuity are of zero interest to me right now after what he's written over the last two seasons. He may have thought his new story was more important than all the scenes we got in his first era about the Doctor being a dad, but it turns out that he was very very wrong.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

To me its about quality of story and keeping things on track.

On track with what? All that should matter is if you enjoy the show.

I'm very much a stickler for canon I'll admit. Story canon and visual canon. When its broken too much or unnecessarily I can no longer enjoy the show.

And that's the core issue.

I use to be like you, with both this show and Star Trek. But as time has passed, I've learned that shouldn't be the primary concern for enjoying a show or film. Now what matters to me is whether the story and characters are enjoyable. If that means disrupting canon, then so be it.

Sometimes a show needs a big reshuffle to keep it interesting. That's why I loved  Discovery's big time jump and changing up the galactic order.

Similarly, I appreciate both Davies' (Time War) and Chibnall's (Timeless Child) attempts to do the same. But here's the thing: I didn't like the Time War and its repercussions initially but over time and with the right writing, it has really grown on me as a way to shake up the status quo. I imagine I'll feel the same with the Timeless Child over time with further developments.

All it takes is an open mind.

 

[David cgc]

He may have thought his new story was more important than all the scenes we got in his first era about the Doctor being a dad, but it turns out that he was very very wrong.

I think even back then, the idea that the Doctor had had a home life and conventional (or at least recognizable) family before he became "the Doctor" was something that was Moffat's point of view; RTD's own scripts went hard on the idea that the Doctor had never had a home or a family, "a normal life, the one adventure I can never have."

Personally, I prefer the perspective that the Doctor had, once upon a time, been normal, a parent and grandparent, and he was transformed by circumstance into an endless wanderer, but I don't think it's something RTD changed his mind about, just that the Timeless Child and general maturity of the series had given him a chance to explore his own ideas about how someone as extraordinary as the Doctor had done something as ordinary as produce a grandchild.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

I always just assumed his life before running off to travel was very... Time Lord, with all the weirdness and duties and traditions that come along with that. He could've had a family without ever having the kind of ordinary life he sees humans having. Plenty of weird people in weird situations have families.

He was trying to raise Susan while on the run in the Tardis, so who even knows what he was doing when his children were born? Well, I guess nothing now, as he never had kids.

 

[JD]

Have any of the TV stories ever revealed exactly what lead to The Doctor stealing the TARDIS and taking off on his travels?

On track with what? All that should matter is if you enjoy the show.


And that's the core issue.

I use to be like you, with both this show and Star Trek. But as time has passed, I've learned that shouldn't be the primary concern for enjoying a show or film. Now what matters to me is whether the story and characters are enjoyable. If that means disrupting canon, then so be it.

Sometimes a show needs a big reshuffle to keep it interesting. That's why I loved  Discovery's big time jump and changing up the galactic order.

Similarly, I appreciate both Davies' (Time War) and Chibnall's (Timeless Child) attempts to do the same. But here's the thing: I didn't like the Time War and its repercussions initially but over time and with the right writing, it has really grown on me as a way to shake up the status quo. I imagine I'll feel the same with the Timeless Child over time with further developments.

All it takes is an open mind.

I had a similar situation with the Discovery Klingons, at first I hated what they had done with them, just because it was so different from the TOS - Enterprise version, but as the season went on they started to grow on me, and by the end of the first season, I actually liked them. Continuity should always come second to telling a good story, it should just be a background element to help tie things together. I like continuity and I do love the universes that have been built up for things like Doctor Who, but the story and the characters should always come first, and if changing continuity elements is what's best for the story they're telling or the characters, then I say go for it. Almost all of our favorite things about the franchise were new additions to the continuity at some point, so there's no reason to that all new additions have to be bad. Hell when it started, the original Star Trek was following James R. Kirk, on the Earth Starship Enterprise with his Vulcanian first officer Spock.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Have any of the TV stories ever revealed exactly what lead to The Doctor stealing the TARDIS and taking off on his travels?

The show itself has largely left it an unanswered question, only ever stating that The Doctor rebelled against the Time Lords for being too boring/restrictive/up-their-own-asses.

I had a similar situation with the Discovery Klingons, at first I hated what they had done with them, just because it was so different from the TOS - Enterprise version, but as the season went on they started to grow on me, and by the end of the first season, I actually liked them.

Whereas I didn't care about the change in Klingons simply because I'm so sick of Klingons in general.

Continuity should always come second to telling a good story, it should just be a background element to help tie things together. I like continuity and I do love the universes that have been built up for things like Doctor Who, but the story and the characters should always come first, and if changing continuity elements is what's best for the story they're telling or the characters, then I say go for it. Almost all of our favorite things about the franchise were new additions to the continuity at some point, so there's no reason to that all new additions have to be bad. Hell when it started, the original Star Trek was following James R. Kirk, on the Earth Starship Enterprise with his Vulcanian first officer Spock.

Agreed with everything you said.

 

[JD]

Whereas I didn't care about the change in Klingons simply because I'm so sick of Klingons in general.

That's fair, the Klingons are one of my favorite parts of Trek, so it was an issue thing for me at the time. But I'm not totally obsessive, so I was able to still enjoy the rest of the show, even from the beginning.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

Hell when it started, the original Star Trek was following James R. Kirk, on the Earth Starship Enterprise with his Vulcanian first officer Spock.

A show sorting out its early-installment weirdness isn't really the same thing as making retcons later. You can change Spock from a Vulcanian to a Vulcan in episode 3 without anyone caring, but not episode 30.

Disco's producers thinking they could get away with drastically retconning the Klingon makeup after three series with a Klingon in the main cast just blows my mind. Of course people weren't going to be happy with that, of course it'd get thrown out the moment Michael Dorn agreed to come back.

 

[EnderAKH]

Im very much a stickler for canon ill admit. Story canon and visual canon.

Wow are you in the wrong franchise. This show hasn't adhered to canon or visual continuity since 1963.

 

[The Wormhole]

I mean, what everyone considers the "traditional Klingon" is itself a redesign introduced twelve years after Klingons were introduced with close to ten appearances (if you include TAS) of the original look.