Dr Who News (5)

[janetteB @janetteb]

sounds as though Murdoch media might have it wrong. just stumbled on a mention on this upcoming series. Seems like it is definitely happening though one can never be entirely certain these days. (I hope it isn’t too much like Torchwood)

cheers

Janette

[nerys @nerys]

@janetteb This looks like the cast I saw in the third installment of the 60th anniversary specials.

@whohar @dentarthurdent I agree that knowing who the Sun’s owner is is key to understanding the article’s slant. I do hope the end is not near. After all, I just got back on board with the specials. But, we live in uncertain times.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@nerys @janetteb @dentarthurdent

The War Between the Land and the Sea is part of the current BBC-Disney deal. IIRC they signed up for (something like) an initial 25 episodes total. Which would mean an 8-episode season 2. I would have preferred a longer run, but I’ll take what I can get at this point.

Still no release date for TWBtLatS that I can find.

While I expect the “axed” story to be over-sensationalised guff and (mainly) untrue, the fact it is there at all is perhaps significant; there may be something going on behind the scenes that we won’t become aware of until much later.

All that said, I think a shake-up would do the show some good, starting with splitting the script editing out from the Showrunner role.

[WhoHar @whohar]

Saturday 12th April confirmed as Season 2 / Series 15 / Season 41 release date.

A whole bunch of guest stars also announced – but I won’t post the list here because of spoilers.

I’m expecting an 8-episode run but I haven’t seen that confirmed yet.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Season Trailer

 

[WhoHar @whohar]

@blenkinsopthebrave

I saw this earlier. Looks promising. Fingers crossed.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@blenkinsopthebrave thank you for sharing the trailer. Wow the cgi budget is obvious. As long as there is still that cosiness that is an essential element of Dr Who. It does look promising though. Looking forward to April.

Cheers

Janette.

[nerys @nerys]

OK, that looks good! Still waiting for my library to get Ncuti Gatwa’s first season, but I don’t think it spoils anything to see this trailer for his second.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

So…

The Doctor thinks it odd that Munday from Boom has rocked up…

People being ejected into space from something that is apparently NOT the Tardis: a classroom? a village hall? A diner???

No obviously familiar villains…

Gatwa deploying his rather arch ‘rock through time’ intonation. That could get a bit annoying.

Rylan Clark!

Otherwise… flashy.

[winston @winston]

@blenkinsopthebrave   Thanks for this.  It does look exciting and even a little scary and I can’t wait. I agree with @janetteb that the cgi looks great and the episodes look action packed but I also like some coziness. As @ps1l0v3y0u says it does look flashy. Bring on the flash.

I am so lucky because this will be one of the first times I will be able to watch with everyone else and I am looking forward to that. We got Disney for a year (thank you daughter) so April 12th is marked on the calendar with a big red question mark.

stay calm

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Intriguing announcement of forthcoming episode titles

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@blenkinsopthebrave
The Robot Revolution, Wish World and The Reality War all seem to resonate to my mind.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

New trailer

 

[janetteB @janetteb]

@blenkinsopthebrave Now that looks good. Less “flashy” than the previous trailer. thanks for sharing it. April 12, not long to wait..

Cheers

Janette

[winston @winston]

@blenkinsopthebrave   Thanks for that. Bow ties are still cool,especially pink ones.

April 12th is coming soon!

stay strong

[WhoHar @whohar]

@blenkinsopthebrave  @janetteb @winston

That’s a good trailer, smaller but bigger at the same time. (How is a trailer like a TARDIS?)

The bit where they end up animated looks like a lot of fun.

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

I think this is probably the best place to discuss the rumour that the Tardis set has been or is in the process of being dismantled  this is only rumour at the moment as far as I’m aware. If the Tardis set has been dismantled it may not indicate the supposed hiatus that has been put forward by many commentators but may actually indicate Ncuti has indeed left the show as has also been rumored. My reasoning that this is a possibility is that generally the Tardis set has been replaced with each regeneration. To be honest I’m hoping both these rumours are false and incorrect.

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

RTD2 has been a curates egg. 50/50 so far, maybe 60/40 in favour.

Falling ratings… this is the significant measure. Also not. Lots of ‘big’ shows get cancelled. Flash Forward was a while ago. Was it that badly received? Severance won’t be cancelled but then it’s on a ‘grown up’ platform. And yes the ratings are great and the show is good: it’s the triple threat. Star Trek ToS was lucky to get a third season. TNG too.

So, is it a question of who you sign up with? I ain’t convinced Disney will ever ‘get’ WHO anymore than JD would ‘get’ The Handmaid’s Tale. Michael Grade had the gall to hammer WHO for not being Star Wars, which aside from the cgi, is EXTRAORDINARILY inferior and derivative sci fi saddled with idiotic dialogue. Really, IT IS.

Oh and MG wanted the budget for a soap opera.

The problem is always internal to the show: sci fi or fantasy; kids show or horror/satire? It’s a peculiar mix. Really quite idiosyncratic. Maybe the problem is Brits literally can’t afford to be distinctly British anymore. Anymore than they can make steel. Or NOT resent success. When we try, we get ‘household budgets’ and productivity quoted back at us by beancounters. Well, anyone can be cheap, but are they any good?

Preceding history: neither C. Baker nor Whittaker are bad actors. Conversely, Tennant rocked up on the back of Casanova, and his Hamlet rocked, whereas Tom was genuinely left field. But both had a creative and sympathetic showrunning team, NOT JNT and Chib.

Showrunner hubris? Surely JNT was out of depth and no one else fancied the gig? There is a case that because JNT didn’t give in, he prolonged the show. Good news if you like Vengance on Varos, or Ace. I do. The rest of post 1984? Not so much.

RTD may have given himself an impossible task this time. He does like to do everything all at once. Is this why the script edding now seems so dodgy? I’m sure it’s not for want of trying but you can’t polish a small brown Richard the third.

[WhoHar @whohar]

@devilishrobby @ps1l0v3y0u

It’s all hearsay atm, and there may be more innocent explanations. As you point out, the Tardis is often rebooted when there is a new Doctor. If this is the case, then the next casting is going to be very interesting.

I’m pretty neutral on another regen, as I am not sold on Gatwa as the Doc. Dunno why, just some actors don’t have enough Doctoriness about them (or the writing doesn’t allow it).

It’s not about just the lead. As above, C Baker and Jodie Whittaker were / are decent actors. The point about both of them is that their seasons were not well received. There’s a kind of alchemy about most shows and Who is no exception (and, due to the nature of the show, might even need that undefinable magic more than most).

Plus, the TV world has changed. Quality is generally up, so poorer shows tend to stand out, and the audience has lots of other options. It’s also far more commercial, so quality alone may not be enough (thankfully the BBC is a bit of an outlier, but the streaming channels are not). Did anyone see Kaos? A solid, well written and acted show that was canned by Netflix because the viewing figures (which were reasonable) didn’t support the large budget. That’s after one season. No chance to bed the show in. Gone. It’s brutal.

My hope is that the BBC take Who back in house and find a way to reboot with a smaller budget, more intimate stories and a fresh creative team. RTD has done an absolutely outstanding job and we wouldn’t even be talking here without him. But he’s been writing Who for 20 years on and off, so no surprise it’s getting a little stale.

[WhoHar @whohar]

Interesting news:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/doctor-whos-next-two-series-35238617

Looks like change is afoot.

[nerys @nerys]

Not a good sign from either publication (Deadline article follows the Variety one):

Variety

[WhoHar @whohar]

@nerys

Yes, I’ve seen a couple of YouTube videos on this very subject. RTD’s statement is pretty equivocal, but I am expecting Who to be offscreen for at least two years.

Interestingly RTD also posted somewhere about all the speculation around Billie Piper’s role, mentioning several of the theories found on this very board, so maybe he is reading our posts < Hi Russell 🙂 >

In related news, the BBC have put out a formal request for pitching an animated Who show on CBeebies, consisting of 2 x 26 episodes of 11 mins length over two years. The tone would be different to the regular show to reflect the audience, with less scares and the villains being more hapless than evil, which means you’d struggle to use most of the classic monsters.  I immediately had a couple of ideas pop into my head, and I’m debating whether it’s worth putting a pitch together; deadline is 10th July, so I don’t have a whole bunch of time. It’s an interesting (and positive) departure for the BBC and for Who.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

No spoilers, but no good news.

Davies: “Doctor Who” Fate Still Uncertain

 

[janetteB @janetteb]

We finally got to watch the final and all agreed that the big budget was not doing the series any favours. the low budget make do was always part of the charm of the original and while the needs a far bigger budget now, and it does need those special effects they are frequently overused, the Unit tower swivelling for instance. It felt more Marvell than Dr Who. The Tower was just fine as Unit H.Q.. teh new H.Q. reminds me of that spin off school series. Coal Hill had that kind of real world charm about it, It was the kind of school I went to, then in the spin off it was all glossy and shiny and soul less. There was no “character”. Unit tower has no “character”. it is all gloss.

I hope the series does go back to BBC with a smaller budget meaning less over the top special effects. good acting and a bit of make up can make for a far scarier “big bad’ than CGI.

cheers

Janette

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb I heartily agree about big-budget overkill. I actually felt that about the UNIT tower in the finale of the previous season (Legend of Ruby Sunday / Empire of Death). In fact UNIT should be a businesslike, unobtrusive, un-ostentatious organisation (in my opinion), not trying to look like some mad dictator’s vanity project.
(I must admit I haven’t seen the latest season, the discs just arrived but my laptop’s drive is only DVD, I do have a Bluray drive but I’ll have to switch laptops – haven’t got round to it yet. So I’d better get on that.)
I’m not arguing in favour of the sometimes-painfully primitive OldWho levels of ‘special effects’ that one has to make allowances for when viewing. I think most of RTD v1.0 and Moff’s seasons had about the right level of production values. Special effects need to be sufficient to support the story, not usurp it. A good and necessary use of CGI was Wild Blue Yonder, which was almost entirely blue screen / CGI, but – because the story was set on a spaceship, and concentrated on the Doctor and Donna – it worked, for me at least. With most stories, that level of CGI would be a distraction.

That’s my 10c, anyway   🙂

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

The future of Who…

Like @whohar, I think it will be off our screens for at least two years.Perhaps more. Perhaps a lot more. RTD2 would seem to have managed what only JNT had previously achieved: to put the nail into the coffin of a well-beloved show. The fact that that it was RTD (the first iteration) who successfully revived the show makes it particularly ironic.

As for the UNIT spin-off about the Sea Devils, I suspect it go the way of Torchwood.

But actual Doctor Who?

[TranslatorCircuit @translatorcircuit]

@whohar @blenkinsoppthebrave

Doctor Who has the most flexible series format possible. The Doctor travels through space and time in their TARDIS, so that the location and scenery changes completely at least once in each story. Companions come and go and the Doctor’s face and body change as well. The regular cast at the beginning of any series or season can be completely replaced by the end.

Doctor Who having any more gaps in production at all is totally unacceptable and I think it’s time for direct action against the BBC as well as anyone else who might be involved, such as RTD and Bad Wolf Productions. It’s time to hit the BBC hard!

Whoever would’ve imagined in their worst nightmares that after Doctor Who came back after a 15 year gap, with only a pathetic 30th Anniversary special crossover with Eastenders and a very poor Americanised TV Movie during those 15 years, that only a few years later in 2009 there would be no series, just three specials followed by another special at the beginning of 2010, ending the Tenth Doctor’s era? Not only that, but there was no new series at all in 2016, 2019, 2022, or 2023! There were only specials in those years.

The BBC has continued to make millions or even billions of Pounds out of Doctor Who while it was off air in 1990-2004, as well as in more recent gap years.

Comments such as the above accepting another gap indicate that the people posting them have been brainwashed into accepting this.

I said in the past that David Tennant was allowed to swan off and play Shakespeare, but in the recent Doctor Who Unleashed 20th anniversary special there was an indication that something else happened instead. They said something like the Production Team AND David Tennant had “decided to move on”. This doesn’t excuse the fact that the BBC didn’t immediately get a new Production Team and a new Doctor, though!

There have only been 15 series or seasons of Doctor Who made in the last 20 years so this means the fans have been conned out of five whole series or seasons! Apart from this, Disney+ and Russell T Davies reduced the length of the last two series from 13 episodes to only eight episodes meaning that we’ve been conned out of another 10 episodes! How dare they?!

There has been something seriously lacking in the Fifteenth Doctor’s era, although the Thirteenth Doctor’s era was fantastic and The Timeless Child storyline was sheer genius which made me tingle as I watched it. It was really bad that the era ended with a 6 part series followed by a few specials, though. In the latest series, I think the episodes “Lucky Day”, “The Story and The Engine”, “Wish World”, and “The Reality War” were the best, while “The Well” was pathetic, and “Lux” wasn’t much better. There were also rumours about Ncuti Gatwa having “prior commitments” which led to the return of David Tennant for the three 60th Anniversary specials, as well as Ncuti Gatwa hardly appearing in “73 Yards”, or in “Dot and Bubble”. I think this is sacrilegious! The Doctor can’t be allowed to have “prior commitments”! As soon as they mention this, they should be regenerated Colin Baker style, meaning by another actor wearing a wig. I was also upset by the use of old measurements such as Yards a few times in a sci fi series, although even Star Trek TOS used metric measurements.

Of course, the idea of producing an animated Doctor Who series for CBeebies is just an insult! The Sarah-Jane Adventures was OK, although not all that fantastic, but this is going too far!

I don’t want to support the BBC producing crap like Eastenders (started with stolen Doctor Who money while the series had a gap), “Strictly Come Dancing”, or “Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg”, a so called reporter who made very biased comments in favour of Boris Johnson. She was Johnson’s main bootlicker.

As far as I’m concerned no Doctor Who means no BBC. I plan to email and phone the BBC telling them I don’t watch any other BBC programmes and I won’t continue to pay for a TV licence. I also plan to campaign to abolish the TV licence.

I feel so angry that I have fantasies of sabotaging Eastenders, as well as “Strictly Come Dancing”, but I don’t think I should mention any details.

If there are any Doctor Who fans reading this who live in countries that have various TV channels that actually produce their own TV series, please try and persuade them to produce a TV series in a similar vein to Doctor Who. I once saw a series called “IT Planeet” from Estonia which I thought was quite good, but it only ran for one season.

https://vimeo.com/22067817

 

 

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@translatorcircuit @blenkinsopthebrave

stand by for a Strictly/Who crossover with Craig Revel Horwood as show runner.

The problem with The BBC is it is a public service broadcaster. The fans may think they ‘own’ the show but so does every license fee payer, and there’s always been a vocal set of critics who will be delighted by the thought that it might cease.

The other aspect is the independent streamers. Cos I haven’t been impressed by their treatment of SF. Am I extraordinarily fussy or has Marvel trashed writing and production values?

I doubt if anyone out there will touch the Who formula as it stands. But that’s not Russ’ fault. You might say it’s Chib’s fault but actually that means it’s The Corporation’s fault because they turfed out Moffat and the heavyweight writers of his era.

Actually, you would think if Apple can make Severance, they could make Moffat era Who. They could probably make RTD2 Who if not for the damage done. Or would they shy away because Who is not really rebootable? Was The Timeless Children actually an attempted reboot, or prescribed Cartmel move, or preparation for winding up the show? Was t’flux the new streamers meta’d? Not very much like prosaic/dull as ditchwater Chib then. Gonna have to watch it one day. Maybe when I’m laid up after a bad traffic accident.

But there are 3 things a Who ‘maker’ shouldn’t do:

present the show as a soap opera

dabble in sententious exposition/voice overs

base the entire story on VR… it quickly becomes incomprehensible. Is this then a case of technical advance (AI) rendering Who redundant?

btw… Tenth Planet: Ben definitely says ‘twenty years’ on seeing the western. And it’s a big guy in a big hat.

[Devilishrobby @devilishrobby]

@pps1l0v3y0u  I have to agree in a large part with your assessment of the BBC it is a public broadcaster so has constraints  on its budgeting and  commissioning ability for any one show, which was why I think they originally went in for the Disney+ deal. The problem was I think there were 2 different Parameters  wanted by the partnership. Where the BeeB in the past has supposedly gone for a quality product but on budgetary constraints, Disney were at that time the deal was struck were on an active hunt to make an extended “splash’ in the streaming market by tieing up as many what they saw as hit series as they could and making a profit out of them. This policy I think has actually backfired on them as I believe from various articles in papers and the internet they are now having problems and are dropping shows that they supposedly had big plans for to try and recoup losses.

Now although Doctor Who has always ad a loyal fan base in the UK and some generally English speaking countries it’s  viewership has always been predominantly popular  in the UK. Also I agree the Marvel and DC big budget and thier  SFX laden content to a large part has created problems of expectations for any and all Science Fiction/Fantasy based shows that are now being made,  which to be frank  the BBC can’t match without going into partnership with at least one of the big streaming services the trouble is whoever they partner with will have thier own expectations, but the BBC need to try and retain as much control over the creative content and overall look of the show as the partner has to recognise it’s the BBC that have steered this for the last 60 years.

[TranslatorCircuit @translatorcircuit]

@ps1l0v3y0u
@devilishrobby

The BBC is a waste of money! Doctor Who fans should complain about as many programmes they produce as possible! Doctor Who pays for itself with all its merchandise. The BBC continued to receive this money during the 1990-2004 gap years. There’s no problem financing Doctor Who at all! A lot of the money from Disney+ was spent on producing episodes in 4K. I haven’t even got a 4K TV and don’t see why I should buy one. I think 3D, including 2D to 3D conversion is more advanced than 2D in any resolution. The CGI version of Omega was crap as well.

I really hope Strictly gets cancelled soon, especially because I read that almost everyone watching Strictly some time ago turned off their TVs when Doctor Who came on!

I don’t care about Severance, which I’ve never seen, but I’ve just read about it and it doesn’t sound anything like Doctor Who. The series Timeless was a bit like Doctor Who, but very American and was cancelled years ago.

I quite liked the classic BBC series “Blake’s Seven”, which I think demonstrated just what can be achieved on a very low budget. For those who don’t know, it was a bit like Star Trek, but where The Federation was evil, like Star Trek’s Mirror Universe stories.

I’m sorry, but the link I posted to the very interesting “IT Planeet” has expired. You can see some trailers on https://www.youtube.com/user/ITplaneet I think it was commissioned or produced by TV3 Estonia, which is part of a group of channels called TV3 in various European countries. It was about a crew of three aliens who had prepared themselves for visiting Earth by intercepting some old TV broadcasts from some distance out in space, which meant they were decades old. Due to this, when they landed in Estonia, they thought it was still part of the USSR. They greeted a mad inventor by speaking Russian and playing the USSR anthem, but he responded by shooting at them, so they want back inside their ship and updated their information, then came out again and started speaking Estonian to him. After that, they had hilarious adventures involving trying to buy computers with forged banknotes that had the same serial numbers, as well as visiting an African country to meet a local conman who promised them a share of a fortune stuck in a bank account in return for paying a fee to release it. They spoke in English during this visit. The series is mainly in the non Indo European language of Estonian, though. There are also some scenes with the aliens speaking their own language. I managed to work out what was going on by observing things very carefully. It’s nothing like Doctor Who, but if a small channel in Estonia can produce something like this, then just imagine what the BBC could do!

Unfortunately, European countries apart from the UK haven’t been producing many sci fi series. Canal+ France has produced “UFOs” (original title OVNIs), while other French companies have produced “Missions”, which has been shown on BBC and iPlayer.

Germany (as West Germany) got off to an early start by producing a space opera type series called “Raumpatrouille Orion” (Space Patrol Orion, ZDF TV) in 1966, but only seven episodes were made. West Germany co produced “Star Maidens” and Germany co produced “Lexx”, but I haven’t heard of any other purely German (i.e. NOT produced by US streaming companies) sci fi series apart from the short lived “Operation Phoenix” (Pro7 TV) which was like Germany’s answer to “The X-Files”. “Sløborn” by ZDF TV (“The Island” on Amazon FreeVee or Prime) is a post apocalyptic series where most of the World’s population is killed by the deadly “Dove Flu”, leading to chaos and the survivors struggling to survive, then rebuild.

“Missie Aarde” by NPO TV (Mission Earth) is a Dutch sci fi comedy series about a spaceship sent from Earth to find a new home for the human race after every country except the Netherlands has been totally submerged by flood waters.

Spain’s TVE has produced “El ministerio del tiempo” (The Ministry of Time) which involves time travel and paradoxes.

Italian broadcaster RAI co produced “Space: 1999”, but has made very little sci fi apart from that.

Production companies from France, Canada, AND the UK were involved in producing the series “Starhunter”, which didn’t seem to ever be shown on any UK based TV channels until Amazon Prime or Amazon FreeVee started showing it a few years ago.

In theory, Germany would be the most likely to produce a series in a similar vein to Doctor Who, but someone told me that the people in charge of German TV channels don’t want to produce sci fi, so German sci fi creators have turned to US streaming services to fund their series such as “Dark” and “Spides”, after I complained to him that they’re not really German at all. He said only the funding came from US companies. Doctor Who has been showing a lot recently on the free German public TV channel “One”, owned by ARD. This included some classic Doctor Who episodes.

I think that after “UFOs”, “Missions”, and co producing “Starhunter”, France might just go further and produce a series in a similar vein to Doctor Who. I can only guess which broadcaster might produce it, but it could be Canal+, OCS, or possibly even the French owned RTL9 from Luxembourg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@translatorcircuit

A Who/Strictly crossover is/was a joke. With a nod toward the musical outings in Ruby Road and Devil’s Chord. That died a death, didn’t it? A bit weird.

Strictly’s ratings are massive. ‘Creatively’ it peaked 10 years ago. I have fond memories of it as a family show: watching it with my kid on a Saturday night. It’s getting tired now.

Not sure what The Corp will do; they have big funding issues, caused both by streaming competition and alt right venom. There are malign players working the situation who would LOVE to come away with the scalp of Who.

I am a big fan of non Space Opera sci fi. And Who too, which SHOULD be squidgy sci fi beyond Opera. I’m afraid some people will never get it.

Not heard of any of these European shows. I’m told to watch Foundation (Apple tv) but I revere early Azimov and it really looked like it had be been knocked together by some sad D&Ders with a huge CGI budget. I’m fussy.

Severence may resonate more with those who surfed the labour market before New Corporate W@nk and zero hours contracts. Best thing I’ve seen in years. Come to think, I’m really taken by the idea of a slow burn claustrophobic Who reboot, but it won’t happen. It’s difficult to reboot Who.

I’m afraid we see different virtues in Who. Personally I like dialogue and ideas. But you really do need brutally severe script edding too; the show has so much history, you can no longer make up big plot departures. Interestingly, none of these elements were Chib’s A game. What was his A game? I’ll leave that argument there.

On the other hand there is a widespread allergy to continuity ‘porn’, and this is understandable. Unless you’re a fan, you won’t want to watch what they will obviously think is a decrepit home movie of The Tenth Planet or an incomprehensible edit of The War Games.

I’m not sure where the show goes from here. RTD’s instinct to make things ‘difficult’ is probably correct. Bland Who would be a waste of time. I haven’t seen the Big Finish oevre but it must be a bit ersatz isn’t it?

The time may NOT be now.

[TranslatorCircuit @translatorcircuit]

Here’s a link to a video covering various rumours and things that actually happened recently in Doctor Who. It all seems to make sense. I don’t think it’s good news, though. It seems the problem is Disney+, as well as the BBC trying to do things the Disney+ way. Let me know what you think.

https://youtu.be/LvTT6h65Trc?si=YBhL-ubwRrsV7vuE 

[winston @winston]

@blenkinsopthebrave     I also think it could be awhile before we see the Doctor back on TV. I really hope that doesn’t happen because I’m not getting any younger.  If there is one thing I know about Who fans is that they/me have a lot of patience when it comes to Doctor Who. Some people will move on and maybe never return to the show but I will wait and if it comes back I will watch it. I probably won’t be doing anything else.

@janetteb   Throwing money around does nothing if there is no story or character development, it’s only a distraction.While we are watching all the bells and whistles we are wowed, but after it is over we realize that it had no soul. So many of the great Who episodes had very little or no CGI or other effects just a blue box and a quarry. I am OK with a smaller budget if the story is good. It can all happen in one room if the story is engaging like Midnight.

I hope that the BBC can keep making Who and I will keep watching and forming my own bonkers theories. Maybe someone will let us know what is happening.

Stay timey-wimey

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@translatorcircuit

so. It’s the blessed algorithms. Bring on the Butlerian Jihad.

[nerys @nerys]

@winston I am OK with a smaller budget if the story is good. It can all happen in one room if the story is engaging like Midnight.

My thoughts exactly!

[TranslatorCircuit @translatorcircuit]

@winston

@nerys

 

Having a smaller budget than with Disney+ has nothing to do with the Tenth Doctor story Midnight. It’s obvious to me that the BBC had overspent with stories produced earlier that year, so then they decided to produce the story Midnight. To sum up, I think this story is totally crap, taking place mainly inside some kind of bus touring the planet Midnight. Passengers can’t leave the bus because of the atmosphere and the radation outside. The main thing that happens in Midnight is a few people repeating what The Doctor has just said, before finally managing to repeat what he’s saying at exactly the same time he’s saying it, which would be impossible IRL apart from using telepathy. Of course all the actors had to do to achieve this was just learn the script! One of the worst Doctor Who stories ever made as part of the classic or modern series. Of course, the worst Doctor Who story ever made was the 30th Anniversary special “Dimensions in Time”, which was a crossover with Eastenders. They originally planned a very ambititious special called “The Dark Dimension”, but it was cancelled due to the BBC wanting to hang on to nearly all the money they’d made out of Doctor Who merchandising without producing any more episodes for about 3 years. I heard that Tom Baker didn’t like the script, but it could have been slightly rewritten or they could just have offered him more money. You can see an animation of it on https://youtu.be/neQbzMCHJ8o?si=rNRdRvu3ujAsip6M

I think some good examples of excellent low budget stories are most of the stories from the First and Second Doctors’ eras. In those days they made 39-45 episodes of about 25 minutes each per year! The number of episodes was cut down to 25-26 per year as from the Third Doctor’s era. I don’t know exactly why this was, because even today or in recent years, the BBC has continued to produce series such as Eastenders, and Casualty, which have about the same number of or even more episodes per year than Doctor Who used to have in the 1960s. Some people might claim that this is completely due to special effects, but how many special effects are used in those other series, and how complicated do the special effects in Doctor Who need to be?

To sum up, less special effects and more episodes NOW!!

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@translatorcircuit Just shows how radically opinions can differ. You call Midnight crap, I think it was one of RTD’s best, and all the better for being a bottle episode. Being stuck in the ‘bus’ with unknown noises going on where nothing should be alive, really made for tension and suspense. And I loved the irony that the stewardess, who originally seemed a hostile character, was the one who saved them all – and nobody even knew her name. There was a moral and a message in there, one that was built into the screenplay, and nobody needed to stand up and spell it out for us at the end (something I hate).

One that I find broadly similar, both in its scary intensity (and its comparatively low budget) was Moff’s ‘Listen’. Also of course ‘Blink’ which had virtually no CGI other than the usual Tardis dematerialising. But then, as against that, there was Wild Blue Yonder, which was a bottle ep with a huge amount of green screen / CGI appropriately used, it looked beautiful and wouldn’t have been nearly as good without the CGI.

One thing I agree with you about (and also I think with @winston, @nerys, @janetteb and @blenkinsopthebrave please guys tell me if I’m wrong there) is that special effects can’t compensate for deficiencies in the story or the acting. But (I think) a certain minimum level of special effects is essential to avoid the viewer having to make allowances for unconvincing or amateurish effects. I have that problem with many of the effects even in late Doctor 7 (pre-gap) episodes, let alone the earliest Doctors. Maybe back in the day the FX were acceptable by the standards of the time, but we’ve become used to a vastly higher standard of FX. The original Cybermen are just so obviously extras in suits, it’s painful. I found all the nuWho Cybermen to be so much more convincing. It wasn’t until Moff’s genius in World Enough and Time, in showing the process of turning Bill into a proto-Cyberman, that I realised that that was the point, and those early Cybermen changed (in my perception) from embarrassingly unconvincing aliens to humans trapped in a cybersuit – and so, retrospectively, authentic and horrifying.

However I don’t think ‘less FX and more episodes’ is likely to help. Writers have only so many good ideas and it’s far better to give them time to polish their scripts, than to spread them (and the budget) too thinly, else you just end up with alien-of-the-week episodes that all start to seem the same. (As for EastEnders and Casualty, I can’t comment authoritatively because I never watch them, or Coronation Street, but I have the impression they’re mostly just humdrum hardly-differentiated soup.) I’m probably showing my ignorance but those low-budget episodes of Doctors 1 and 2, weren’t they mostly six-part stories? So they equated to just six to eight 3-hour stories per year with (I dimly seem to recall) quite a lot of padding, though it’s so long since I watched one that’s probably a risky assertion for me to make.

[TranslatorCircuit @translatorcircuit]

@dentarthurdent

You should at least consult an episode guide before posting a long reply like that!

I think that Blink was an excellent story which introduced the Weeping Angels, but it was also a a Doctor Lite story. It involved a nightmare scenario of people having their lives destroyed by being forcibly sent back in time where there was far less technology and far fewer rights. After this, they became brainwashed into accepting their fates. I think it would be far more realistic if the Weeping Angels victims killed themselves instead. If it had happened to me then I’d at least have attempted to recreate various technology from the future and organised civil rights protests before killing myself!

Of course, the Hartnell and Troughton stories are widely available, including on BBC iPlayer, so there’s no real excuse for not having seen them. People outside the UK can just use a VPN. They were originally shown as 25 minute episodes once per week. Some of them were 4 episodes long, while a lot of others were 6 episodes long, or occasionally longer. There continued to be a lot of stories that were 6 episodes long until into the Fourth Doctor’s era, when  this was phased out, although some later stories were longer than 4 episodes. As from the Fifth Doctor’s era, nearly all stories were 4 episodes of 25 minutes each, apart from experiments with episodes of about 45-50 minutes long, as well as “Trial of a Time Lord”. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with stories that are about 2.5 hours long in total, but there is something wrong with yearly series or seasons which are only 8 episodes of 45-50 minutes long!

 

[WhoHar @whohar]

@translatorcircuit

Comments such as the above accepting another gap indicate that the people posting them have been brainwashed into accepting this

Or maybe people who understand a little bit about how the television industry works have realised that, given there is no agreement in place with Disney+ and no filming currently ongoing, there has to be a two-year gap at minimum.  Has the BBC been slow to pivot and take the show back in house? Perhaps. I don’t know and I doubt anyone outside of a select few key players at the BBC, Bad Wolf and Disney really know what’s happening. Maybe RTD will update A Writer’s Tale in a few years, and we’ll all find out.

We know that RTD has Season 3 and part of Season 4 written and drafted out and that it would be a continuation of the first 2 seasons. Given the audience and critical reaction to Seasons 1 and 2, it is understandable that there should be a pause to re-evaluate and potentially change direction, maybe with a new creative team. This all takes time.

The BBC is publicly funded and has a remit to produce programs that are aimed at a wide range of people. It does not ringfence any money it earns on any given show and spend it just for that particular show, otherwise plenty of its current content would not be viable. This may be stuff that neither you or I would watch but the BBC is one of the few public service broadcasters left in the world, so it is within its rights and remit to spend its money how it chooses.

Additionally, the television and streaming landscape has hardened in recent years. Disney are re-evaluating Disney+ as it’s currently making a loss. Their strategy of milking to death every IP they can get their hands on has simply not worked. Audiences are walking away in their droves. Many people within Disney are being laid off as cost cutting measures; of course, not the Executives who set the strategy and direction but it’s the ordinary workers who are being hit and their livelihoods impacted. Given this, any disappointment we may have over the non-airing of a television show quite rightly pales in comparison.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@translatorcircuit If you’d care to point out where ‘consulting an episode guide’ would have improved my comment please feel free to.

As it happens I usually consult tardis.fandom.com about anything I’m unsure of, or the transcripts at chakoteya.net. But I can claim familiarity with all of post-gap Who, having watched each ep several times at least (maybe less for Chibs’s tenure). In fact I’ve got it all on DVD, also the last few eps of Seven and the movie. I’m outside the UK so I can’t use iPlayer and I’ve never used a VPN, not going to bother just to watch pre-Gap Who (and I have no other use for a VPN). So my exposure to those episodes is fragmentary. I don’t need an excuse for not having seen them in their entirety, it isn’t a requirement for being a Who fan so far as I’m aware. Anyway, you seem to have confirmed my general impression that those older stories were typically 4-6 episodes long, so I’m not sure how ‘consulting an episode guide’ would have helped.

Re ‘Blink’, I doubt if anyone transported 70 years back in time would react by killing themselves (unless, of course, they were of a suicidal disposition). Most displaced people make the best out of the conditions they find themselves in. Maybe they would try to recreate modern tech (but how? Do you know in detail how a microwave oven works, or even a foodmixer? The overwhelming majority of inventions are dependent on a vast industrial background. Consider even a primitive gadget like tape recorders – they depend on the supply of mylar tape and fine magnetic coating which are highly sophisticated chemically. Also, plastic helps a lot. I suppose an electric guitar might be within the realms of practicality, and of course knowing that something can be done and has will have been done is half the battle). Maybe if they were of that inclination, they might start organising protests against – something, but most people aren’t. But I think 90% of people would just keep their heads down and try to make the best of their new circumstances. It’s interesting to speculate anyway.

(In that connection I’ll revert to an old thesis of mine, that most inventions arise when the technological climate favours them, too early and the necessary infrastructure isn’t there, too late and someone’s already done it. Take aeroplanes, flight was ‘in the air’ in 1901, if the Wrights hadn’t managed it there were a dozen others not far behind. Or the first steam locomotive, if Richard Trevithick hadn’t managed to put one of his high-pressure boilers on wheels, someone else would have. (And I’m not in any way denigrating the Wrights or Trevithick by saying that, they were the people who successfully did it first.) In fact the *only* invention I can think of, that might not have happened otherwise, was Henri Giffard’s steam injector for locomotive boilers – it seems highly counter-intuitive, it was in no way a development of anything existing, and there was no desperate need for it since the piston pumps already in use, worked.)

[nerys @nerys]

@translatorcircuit Well, I am going to disagree with you. “Midnight” ranks near the top of my favorite Doctor Who episodes. It’s one of the few episodes I feel compelled to watch over and over again. I love it precisely because of its claustrophobic setting. It feels like a stage play. Not something I would want for every episode, but I found the novelty refreshing.

I remember feeling a real sense of threat to the Doctor. I felt confident that he would escape this danger, somehow … but how? So there was a gnawing sense of doubt, right up until the climax.

The interplay between David Tennant and Lesley Sharp was brilliant. I was utterly convinced that Sky (or the creature that had inhabited her) was taking over the Doctor. I was sad that Sky Sylvestri and the unnamed hostess did not survive. But that’s part of what sets this episode apart. The Doctor set out on his own, leaving Donna to relax while he sought some fun and stimulation. Instead, what he and the others got was insight into the human character … much of it not pretty, revealed in the confines of a Lifeboat setting. And not everyone got out alive. One of the most haunting episodes, for me.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@nerys @whohar @translatorcircuit @dentarthurdent

I wouldn’t say Midnight was over-rated, more that the whole of series 4, including the obligatory classic monster 2 parter, was pretty stellar. Gripping, unusual, great acting, top in any other season. Harsh to say there’s too much fuss made about it.

Interesting that Moffat announced he was moving toward more stand alone eps for the second half of series 7. Superficially similar to some aspects of Chib’s approach for series 11+12, which sounds like your preference, @translatorcircuit, before t’floox wiped out all rationality.

I wonder if ‘stand alone’ was a Corporation instruction to avoid hifalutin arcs, continuity and Cartmel?

Midnight seemed like a standalone until The Well, which I suspect makes the Midnight Monster a classic critter… mirrors, mind games, dreams, snakes…

 

[TranslatorCircuit @translatorcircuit]

@whohar

I really couldn’t care less “how the television industry works” if it means constantly having gap years in Doctor Who! However it works must be destroyed, then the way it used to work or a way similar to that established. The main priority must be to get another Doctor Who special shown later this year, followed by another series next year. That’s it. Of course, I also want the BBC to make up for the gap years of 2009, 2016, 2022, and 2023, as well as being conned out of 10 episodes in 2024 and 2025!!

 

 

[TranslatorCircuit @translatorcircuit]

@dentarthurdent

I was referring to your lack of knowledge about the first two Doctors’ eras. It’s essential to watch the classic series. The modern series wouldn’t even exist without it.

As for being forced back into the distant past, destroying my lifestyle, I’ve already had my lifestyle destroyed a few times, but not as badly as that. Just being forced to live in the middle of nowhere caused a massive depression for me, nearly leading to a nervous breakdown. I was threatened with worse than that, then I made plans about how to commit suicide if that threat was put into action.

How to try and re invent modern technology? I could get in touch with people who knew how to make certain things, give them the ideas, then wait and see what they could do about it. I doubt they could re invent the Internet soon enough for me, though.

 

[WhoHar @whohar]

@translatorcircuit

I really couldn’t care less is such a petulant way to start a post, but OK.

However it works must be destroyed, then the way it used to work or a way similar to that established.

Bear in mind that the way it used to work led to a gap of 16 years between TV series, then that’s not the solution you think it is. If it was even possible. Which it isn’t.

 

[WhoHar @whohar]

On a more positive note, there are rumours that the BBC are talking to both HBO and to Netflix about stepping into the vacancy apparently left by D+.  HBO already have a working relationship with Bad Wolf, and if they do come on board I can see their ethos aligning well with the essence of Who. Likely to have longer runs too.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@whohar that is a promising rumour. I think a partnership with HBO might work as they seem to like British drama and to favour high quality productions. Just as long as they don’t try and turn Dr Who into the next Got but I doubt very much they would.

I am currently optimistic about the likelihood that Dr Who will be back on our screens within the next couple of years and even if not I feel that it went out on a promising note. I am glad that RTD returned to rescue the show from the Chib’s era.For all the flaws in the past two series there were lots of good episodes and parts of episodes and there are now a few more episodes to add to the long list of “re watches”. My main concern is that this echoes what was said of the final MoCoy series. Lets hope that history doesn’t really repeat.

cheers

Janette

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@nerys I agree with your observations on Midnight. Possibly the best episode RTD wrote, or at least up there with his best.

@ps1l0v3y0u I’d agree that Season 4 was generally pretty good. I wouldn’t rate it the best season, I reckon 6 or 7 would beat it, but not by a lot, and most seasons have a range of quality. How does one rate seasons anyway, by the number of top-notch episodes in them, or by the average quality – would a season with a few brilliant episodes and a few clunkers beat a season with generally good episodes? Even just going by my own rating of episodes (which I’m aware is unlikely to be identical with anyone else’s), I have some difficulty ranking seasons, and I might judge differently tomorrow 🙂

The Well, I see is part of Series 15. I’ve got the Bluray discs which just arrived (couldn’t get DVD’s) so now I just have to brainwash my laptop into recognising my USB Bluray drive and hope DRM doesn’t successfully prevent me watching my discs on my laptop. I hate DRM with a deep-seated hatred. If I can read them I might even try transcoding and compressing them so I can write them to DVD, it’s probably breaking all sorts of copyright laws but I’m not going to resell them so Disney can take a hike. [/rant]

@translatorcircuit The creators of ‘content’ (and that includes the television industry) are not under any obligation to satisfy our requirements on how they make programmes. Or indeed, how their storylines go. To paraphrase some dude about ‘free speech’, I detest ‘Kill the Moon’ but I will defend their right to make it. Even, Chibnall’s several series. (Also my right to say it’s terrible). All we can demand is that they use their best efforts; all we can hope for is that they make content that is entertaining and satisfying to a large number of viewers and – if we’re lucky – suits our tastes… I don’t see their failure to make enough episodes in some years as stealing from the fans. It may be considered a misjudgement, but we don’t own it.

I strongly disagree that it’s essential to watch the first few series. As it happened I did see quite a few episodes of early Doctor Who at the time, but that was so long ago I can hardly remember them. (About the only detail I do remember was some military characters waving broomhandle Mausers, presumably under the impression they looked sufficiently exotic). So for me, ‘Rose’ was the first episode I watched in recent times, and the entire series of nuWho since then has made perfect sense to me. It *doesn’t matter* what Sarah Jane Smith had to do with the Doctor decades ago, in School Reunion she was just a ‘past Companion’ and that’s all I needed to know. There was no plot point that depended crucially on what they did before. It wasn’t necessary, for example, to know what the original Daleks or Cybermen were like to understand or appreciate their modern incarnations. Not even when Moffat resuscitated those painfully-obvious humans-in-suits early Cybermen with rather horrifying consequences in World Enough and Time – having seen the early ones added a few per cent to my appreciation of the episode but not essential.

I have since gone back and watched the movie and the last four stories of Seven. In retrospect, though I do like Seven and Ace, they don’t add much to my appreciation of RTD’s first season.

@whohar @janetteb I think HBO might be a better fit to Who than the Mouse. I’m still (as I noted) trying to decipher the Blurays of the latest season. I can (if I have to) commandeer the Bluray player attached to our TV but I’d sooner watch it on my laptop where I don’t have to negotiate for possession 🙂

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent @whohar @nerys @translatorcircuit @janetteb

Midnight… you can call it a bottle episode or whatever. It was well done. Love a bit of paranoia. The only problem might be the stewardess’ sacrifice.  Hope the blue ray’s work @dentarthurdent !

RTD best ep? Turn Left and Love and Monsters (ha ha), the Dalek/Cyberman face-off in Doomsday, if only that. Quite liked the Utopia season ender too, just NOT Doctor/Dobby/Messiah.

Maybe good news re the streamers but they will want a pound of flesh. Similarities to the end of The Cartmel era… there’s no Michael Grade with a dagger. The BBC seem to be conflicted re Who: it’s unflushable, if you know what I mean. But BBC funding issues are a game changer. I ask again could T’floox have been both the streaming challenge meta’d AND a trial run of a Who final wrap: literally the end of The Whoniverse??

The virtues of Classic?? Some is truly virtuous and ground breaking. Some is very bad. The production values were other.

Cyberman… Keys of Marinus has been retconned as a Cyberman story, and it sounds intriguingly other, but it’s just so slooow…

The Holmes/Hinchcliffe era was scarred by Robot, Revenge of The Cybermen, Planet of Evil, Hand of Fear, and Invisible Enemy, none of them disasterous but thrown into sharp relief by the glory of the rest of those 3 seasons (although there was a bit of repetition). There again, even JNT, pre Cartmel, could curate the Mara stories, Androzani and Varos.

Is it better to endure the boring, badly written and worse produced (and who thought that those days would return – looking at you Chib) or take a short break? Not a 16 year break. That was Grade done that.

The loss of the xmas episode is tough though.

[nerys @nerys]

@whohar I love the HBO rumor! I have HBO because it’s linked with Crave in Canada, thus removing the Disney+ dilemma from my options.

@ps1l0v3y0u My take on the hostess’ sacrifice in “Midnight” is that her flight safety training was kicking in. Even though she seemed just as paranoid and accusatory as the passengers, my sense was that she finally realized the Doctor was right, saw the danger, grabbed Sky and opened the door, sacrificing herself. Though I wonder if the creature inhabiting Sky would have survived, since it was an entity prior to gaining entry to the bus.

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