Things to go when Moffat leaves

[The Wormhole]

As for the Paternoster Gang, I think Moffat has pretty much said that there are only so many man-eating lesbian lizard-woman jokes you can make before it gets old.

That's because Moffat only thinks of them as a joke and only uses them accordingly. It's no coincidence that their best episode was the one Moffat didn't write, The Crimson Horror, and what helped is that Mark Gatiss didn't treat them as only a joke.

Yes, they are humorous and work best in a light-hearted episodes, but there's so much more you can do with them beyond the 38th joke about Strax messing up gender identification.

As for the Weeping Angels, I think it's a bit more likely that we'll see them again. Even if they had to ask for permission, I think they'd get it. After all, Russell T. Davies creations such as the Ood, the Judoon, & the Shadow Proclamation have reappeared multiple times during the Moffat era. I suppose the one tricky thing would be finding ways to fit them in. Because of their specific nature, you can't just throw them into the background as random aliens like you can with the Ood & Judoon.

Why not? That's exactly what they did in Time of the Doctor and Hell Bent.

 

[Starkers]

I think the Weeping Angels are one of those concepts that get less impressive each time they're reused. "Blink" was amazing, "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh and Stone" was good but stretched the concept a bit too much in some ways, "The Angels Take Manhattan" was idiotic, and everything since has just been a cameo. I'd just as soon not see them again.

I think there's still potential in them and I think it's only the giant Liberty Angel that's ridiculous in their last full on showing. I think if they were used again they would need to be scaled back, try to recapture some of the sense of claustrophobia of Blink- a country house under siege by one of two angels...heck I'm coming up with ideas just thinking about it.

I think they do need to be used sparingly, an Angel episode once a year or even once every couple of years might be too much but I hope we don't have to wait 20 years for them to return!

That's because Moffat only thinks of them as a joke and only uses them accordingly. It's no coincidence that their best episode was the one Moffat didn't write, The Crimson Horror, and what helped is that Mark Gatiss didn't treat them as only a joke.

Yes, they are humorous and work best in a light-hearted episodes, but there's so much more you can do with them beyond the 38th joke about Strax messing up gender identification.

Why not? That's exactly what they did in Time of the Doctor and Hell Bent.

Except even the Crimson Horror mainly played on them to humorous effect, especially Strax. It's easier to treat Jenny and Vastra seriously. I don't see a major problem anyway, Friends lasted years making Joey's a bit dim jokes-I'd love a short 6x30 minute episode series that was just a bit of fun. Not to be sadly.

 

[Christopher]

I'd like to see more of the Silurians other than Vastra. And a more serious take on the Sontarans again.

And I wish someone would bring back the Draconians from "Frontier in Space." They were intriguing, an alien race who weren't monsters-of-the-week but simply another civilization, competing with humans but not beyond reason or reconciliation. Cool design, too. And yet they haven't been seen since their one and only appearance in the '70s. If the new series can bring back the bloomin' Macra, why can't we see the Draconians again? (An updated creature design for Alpha Centauri from the Peladon stories would be cool too.)

 

[The Wormhole]

Except even the Crimson Horror mainly played on them to humorous effect, especially Strax. It's easier to treat Jenny and Vastra seriously. I don't see a major problem anyway, Friends lasted years making Joey's a bit dim jokes-I'd love a short 6x30 minute episode series that was just a bit of fun. Not to be sadly.

Oh sure, but The Crimson Horror seemed a bit more than their other episodes. The other episodes is just people in Victorian times are more shocked to learn Vastra and Jenny are lovers than learning Vastra is a lizard, and Strax can't tell the difference between men and women. And while this is in The Crimson Horror, there seems to be more substance to the characters there than in the other episodes.

I guess part of the problem is the Gang fell victim to their own popularity, just like the Weeping Angels and many other of Moffat's creations. It's doubtful he planned to revisit them after A Good Man Goes to War, Strax especially since he was killed in that episode. But due to overwhelmingly positive fan reaction he felt compelled to bring them back despite having no idea what to do with them.

And really, Strax's gender confusion is getting too silly, especially now he's referring to women as "boy" and men as "girl." He can obviously tell there is a difference, it really that hard to remember which name goes with which gender?

 

[Starkers]

I like to think he's doing it on purpose, probably in hopes of picking a fight!

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

For me, while jokes about Vastra as a lesbian lizard lady get old quickly, I'm always up for more jokes about how Strax is a dim-witted psychotic warmonger.

"He will be lured from the dangers of London to this place of safety. And we will melt him with acid!"
"OK, that last part?"
"And we will NOT melt him with acid. Old habits."

"You must stop worrying. By now, he's almost certainly had his throat cut by the violent poor."

I'd like to see more of the Silurians other than Vastra.

I'd like to see a story actually set during the Silurian age. An otherwise perfectly ordinary Earth-bound story, except that all of the people are Homo Reptilia.

An updated creature design for Alpha Centauri from the Peladon stories would be cool too.

I keep expecting the Doctor to make a reference to The Great Pharmacy of Alpha Centauri. "For the Alpha Centauri people, their face is just one giant eyeball. Imagine the size of their eye-droppers!"

 

[Christopher]

I'd like to see a story actually set during the Silurian age. An otherwise perfectly ordinary Earth-bound story, except that all of the people are Homo Reptilia.

Well, not the actual Silurian period, since they were misnamed. The only land-dwelling life forms in the real Silurian were plants and arthropods, and the only vertebrates were bony fish species. But yeah, a story set during their heyday would be interesting.

 

[diankra]

For what it's worth, my personal theory on the Silurian name is that it's a loop.
The Silurian era is named after the Welsh coast where the first fossils from that time were found. The area got its name from the pre-Roman tribe who lived there, the Silures. Maybe they got their name from contact with a shelter of prehistoric reptiles who called themselves Silurians...

 

[Christopher]

For what it's worth, my personal theory on the Silurian name is that it's a loop.
The Silurian era is named after the Welsh coast where the first fossils from that time were found. The area got its name from the pre-Roman tribe who lived there, the Silures. Maybe they got their name from contact with a shelter of prehistoric reptiles who called themselves Silurians...

But they didn't originally call themselves that. In "Doctor Who and the Silurians," it was the Doctor himself who first used the name, though he derived it from the research of Dr. Quinn. Malcolm Hulke must've gotten angry letters, though, since in "The Sea Devils," he has the Doctor point out that "Silurian" is "a complete misnomer. The chap who discovered them must have got the period wrong. No, properly speaking, they should have been called the Eocenes." (Although that's wrong too, since the Eocene started 10 million years after the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct.) We don't actually hear a Silurian use that name for themselves until "Warriors of the Deep."

 

[diankra]

In that first serial the Doctor says "Are you a Silurian?" to the first one he meets, and while Quinn has a globe of the Earth in the Silurian period, he never calls them that (cos he dies before he got a chance to talk honestly to the Doctor).
As we're in the period when the Doctor frequently recognises things but can't remember the details (because the Time Lords have restricted his memories) the idea that Silurians is their own term for themselves (which the Doctor vaguely knows, but Quinn mis-understood) is as good a retcon as we're likely to get.
I think!

 

[Christopher]

In that first serial the Doctor says "Are you a Silurian?" to the first one he meets, and while Quinn has a globe of the Earth in the Silurian period, he never calls them that (cos he dies before he got a chance to talk honestly to the Doctor).

But before that, the Doctor mentions that Quinn's research focused on the Silurian period. So presumably Quinn is the discoverer/namer that the Doctor is referring to in "The Sea Devils" (though maybe he, like Hulke, was just papering over his own mistake.)

As we're in the period when the Doctor frequently recognises things but can't remember the details (because the Time Lords have restricted his memories) the idea that Silurians is their own term for themselves (which the Doctor vaguely knows, but Quinn mis-understood) is as good a retcon as we're likely to get.
I think!

The thing is, as far as I can tell, "Warriors of the Deep" is the only time we ever hear any Silurian using that name for their own species -- although Strax uses the term once in "A Good Man Goes to War." I've never seen the logic of favoring the exception over the rule.

 

[The Wormhole]

Warriors of the Deep was weird with names anyway. For example, in The Sea Devils the only character to use the term "Sea Devils" was that guy in the ocean fort claiming to have been attacked "by sea devils." Then in Warriors of the Deep, everyone's saying Sea Devils, the Silurians and even the Sea Devils themselves.

Meanwhile, on the issue of the Silurian name, Terence Dicks once said Silurian sounds cooler than any of the alternatives so he sticks with that, even if it is wrong.

 

[Christopher]

Well it could be worse. "The War Games" is confusing with the character names. The War Chief is a Time Lord and the War Lord is not. Dicks himself got the characters' titles mixed up on the DVD commentary, and he co-wrote the thing.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to Doctor Who, Terrance Dicks is hardly ever wrong. (Season 6B happened! He made it official in "Players" & "World Game"!)

I never had any confusion with the War Chief vs. the War Lord. Their roles relative to each other were always clear and they called each other by those names often enough. Though I imagine it can be a bit of a mouthful when you've got the War Lord, the War Chief, and the Security Chief.

 

[Christopher]

I never had any confusion with the War Chief vs. the War Lord. Their roles relative to each other were always clear and they called each other by those names often enough. Though I imagine it can be a bit of a mouthful when you've got the War Lord, the War Chief, and the Security Chief.

Sure, but one would expect the Time Lord to be called the War Lord, and he isn't.

But yeah, it's clearer in the actual story than it is when trying to remember the titles in retrospect. For a 10-part storyline, it manages to sustain interest by constantly evolving. The first few episodes are in the War Zones with the evil generals as the villains. Then you start to see the game masters in the control center and the War Chief becomes a presence. Then the Security Chief starts getting suspicious of the link between the War Chief and the Doctor, and we start to get hints about the Time Lords and the Doctor's origins. And then Philip Madoc finally shows up as the War Lord and totally steals the show from the broadly acted, melodrama-villain Chiefs by giving an understated, calm, and therefore far more menacing performance. Nobody could possibly confuse the War Lord and the War Chief at that point. And then in episode 10 we get the payoff as the Time Lords are revealed.

 

[The Wormhole]

Terence Dicks certainly has the best attitude toward continuity. "Continuity is whatever I can remember."

 

[One Lucky Red Shirt]

Ok i love doctor who. Moffats run has been pretty good. But what needs to change is how a series or a series finale builds on something very good and than its wrapped up too quickly and the last 10-15 min. Is spent on happy endings.

 

[Photoman15]

Retcon Clara out as a dream, a nightmare or a fear of the Doctor.

 

[One Lucky Red Shirt]

Bring on the ice warriors! !

 

[Iamnotspock]

I suppose it's unlikely that we'll see River Song or the Paternoster Gang again after Moffat leaves. But then, I doubt we'll see them again during Moffat's final season either. "The Husbands of River Song" seemed to pretty thoroughly cap off her adventures, and no one besides Moffat was ever allowed to write for her for TV anyway. As for the Paternoster Gang, I think Moffat has pretty much said that there are only so many man-eating lesbian lizard-woman jokes you can make before it gets old.

Oh, I don't know, I think they're right up Chibnall's street. Perhaps though, he'll bring over his own Victorian lesbian alien-fighters from Torchwood.