Should there be a return to more traditional WHO stories?

[McDuff]

Moff said in the SFX interview that the arc would end this year and more-or-less said that the next would be more standalones.

I love Doctor's who standalones and the Davies era most.

 

[23skidoo]

The way the old show was structured a person could get into it at anytime that's not the case now though,

I don't agree. First, when the original series was syndicated in half hours I was forever tuning in mid-story and not understanding what the heck was going on. It wasn't until PBS began airing omnibuses and the DVDs came out that I was able to understand the plots of half of those stories.

Now imagine if this was the 1960s again, the days of the half-hour chapters, where if you missed Part 1 (no DVRs or downloads available), you sometimes were hooped for a month or even 2 months in some cases. And those who were catching each episode had to keep track of plots and characters (and I don't buy this nonsense that the original series was more simplistic. Anyone who says that clearly was watching the show while tweeting or something - at times the stories were more political and complex than anything we've seen since 2005) for weeks and months at a time. Today, people have such short attention spans they bitch about trying to follow a storyline for 6 weeks.

What is convoluted about River Song's story arc? It makes perfect sense to me. And I like the character more than ever. I just hope they don't "kill her off" on Saturday (as in lead the storyline right into Silence in the Library).

So the Moff says more standalones next year. OK, not a problem. Just like X-Files, nuBSG and any other arc-heavy show, standalones can be a good thing. Certainly this year alone DW has presented us with several classics, from Doctor's Wife to The God Complex. But just promise me no one will complain about there being no arcs and the show becoming too old fashioned and simplistic and all that. You're getting what you wished for. That goes for people who couldn't keep track of Miracle Day's plot or that of Children of Earth. Don't go crying if we end up going back to the days of Cyberwoman and Out of Time on Torchwood.

Alex