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21 July 2017 at 14:45 #61245
One of the most persistent tropes of the anti-Moffat brigade is that Capaldi is a great Doctor who was poorly served with more than his share of bad scripts. I’m going to call bullshit on that right now because to my mind he’s enjoyed the best run of most consistent, strongly written stories of any AG Doctor. He’s never had to endure a Boom Town, or a Fear Her or a Love and Monsters. (It seems to me each RTD series had at least one, and sometimes more than one, absolute clunker that was near unwatchable even at the time). And even Matt Smith’s era had a serious slump in the middle before finishing strongly again. The ‘movie of the week’ half series really didn’t work for me and I think lost the show some momentum which Smith’s finally series struggled to regain, although it did manage it.
The Capaldi era has had its misfires — In The Forest of the Night, Sleep No More — but they seem to me to have been interesting ones, with the feeling of something interesting, something experimental, being tried but failing. But overall a lot of my favourite and what I consider the most interesting of the AG stories — Listen, The Zygon Invasion/Inversion, Kill The Moon, Mummy on the Orient Express, Heaven Sent, The Pilot, World Enough and Time, The Doctor Falls — have all been clustered in the Capaldi era. It seems to me that the arrival of Capaldi sparked off a fresh enthusiasm in Moffat that had perhaps flagged slightly towards the latter half of Smith’s tenure. And because the pace of the show became perhaps slower and more philosophical, that doesn’t equate to ‘bad writing’. Just ‘writing that some people don’t like’ and there is a difference.
Series 8 — the comments on the Capaldi blog I did a while back seem to suggest that this is a ‘Marmite’ series but it’s got some great stories in it and Capaldi is brilliant. But it is hobbled by a couple of stories, like Forest, which just didn’t work and Time Heist, which always felt to me like it was a Smith story that had somehow been carried over (for some reason I just kept imagining Smith, Amy, Rory and River in the story). The series biggest drawbacks were Danny Pink, a character it was hard to ever warm to and a finale that felt just a bit too much like an RTD pastiche for my liking. And the Doctor’s character was just a bit off. I agree that there was tendency to give him too many Tuckerisms and the hair and costume were wrong I think. He was too buttoned down, too restrained (I seem to remember someone saying ‘like a Dad at a wedding’) but this, I suppose, can be put down to regeneration angst.
Series 9 — A stronger and less sombre series and one that I really like. It starts off strong with a great Dalek two-parter (I don’t get why SM himself is so down on this story. I think it’s great). And then it’s also got the Zygon two-parter, which I think is a highlight of Capaldi’s run, and also Heaven Sent, which counts as probably one of my favourite Who episodes of all time and almost certainly my favourite Moffat episode. And as @wolfweed says, they’ve loosened up the character of the Doctor with the hoodie n shades, rock n roll, midlife crisis vibe, which I think really works. Capaldi riding in on a tank playing the guitar solo is surely one of the best entrances of the character ever. No real downsides for me in this series, although I’m not sure the character of Ashildr/Me quite worked — I think largely down to the casting. Getting Maisie Williams was a coup but her performance to me was a bit flat where I think the character needed just a bit more River-esque exuberance. (It’s one of the great shames of Capaldi’s run that we didn’t see more of River. Kingston and PC had great chemistry together. But I suppose the whole Missy arc wouldn’t have worked if River had been on the scene.)
Series 10 — Great. Really hard to fault. They’ve loosened up Capaldi’s character even more and he’s now completely nailed it. (I do really wish we’d started to see rock n roll Doc maybe about half a series earlier than we did.) And Bill works as a far better match for his character than Clara did. Rather than the buttoned down, sombre Doc of the s8, we’ve got this impulsive, erratic one who seems to me to be a strange fusion of Hartnell and Tom Baker. My one reservation is that the Monks three-parter doesn’t really work and kills the momentum built up by the opening half a dozen episodes. But it picks up speed again (WEAT just one of the best Who episodes ever to my mind) to end with what I’d say is the best finale the AG show has ever had.
And now we’re waiting for the Christmas episode, which promises to be special in all kinds of ways. What I’m looking forward to is seeing how 1 and 12 bounce off each other, some kind of meaningful statement on the regenerations of both Doctors and I’m also hoping that we see more Jodie Whittaker than just an end-of-episode regeneration. I’m also wondering if whether 12’s reluctance to regenerate is going to be seen as slightly more problematic, given that we now know that 13 is going to be a woman.
21 July 2017 at 13:29 #6124121 July 2017 at 12:59 #61239Hmmm, SJW — an expression that falls into the same bracket as the likes of ‘EUSSR’ and ‘magic money tree’ that tells you more about the user than it does anything else. The word ‘pandering’ is highly loaded too. It’s not pandering (nor demeaning) to listen to people’s concerns about representation. What is demeaning is any attempt to devalue or marginalise those concerns by dismissing them with pejorative language loaded with implications of ‘unimportant’ or ‘irrelevant’ in order to continue to operate from a position of absolute and unquestioned privilege.
But the thing that gets me about this expression is the idea that ‘social justice’ is somehow a bad thing, something that can be rendered in a pejorative sense. How can anyone, outside of the most rabid right-winger, be against social justice? Quite apart from anything else it runs absolutely counter to the ethos of the show. I fail to see how anyone could continue to watch Who for any significant amount of years without subscribing to its themes of tolerance, equality and, well, change.
And nothing has been ‘lost’. If anything the mythos of the show has been added to. No one’s saying that the Doctor is never going to be a man again. Chances are the 14th Doc will be. What you’re looking at is a probable maximum of three years of JW as the Doctor (and which might turn out to be amazing). What has happened is that another layer has been added to the character of the Doctor — something that showrunners of the future will have the option of exploring, or not, depending on their creative vision.
What’s more, while it’s true that the character of the Doctor should be celebrated for a cerebral ‘brains over brawn’ ethos, how is that gender specific? Those qualities will almost certainly apply to JW’s Doctor as they did to, say, Matt Smith’s. At the end of the day, you’re somehow saying that these values only count if embodied in a male and that to me shows a terrible lack of imagination and one, thankfully, that is not shared by the majority of the younger generation who from what I can see are embracing the idea of a female Doctor.
21 July 2017 at 01:02 #61204@pstrong —
A regeneration is definitely a jittery time. I remember the sheer apprehension at losing Tom Baker and getting Peter Davison at the time and I ended up loving him in the end. Same with Matt Smith. But I somehow knew that Capaldi was going to be great and the more I see of her, the more I’m convinced of the same with Whittaker.
But yes, the waiting is gruelling part.
21 July 2017 at 00:22 #61200@juniperfish–
I do find complaints of gender insult and unfairness regarding the casting of a female Doctor to be akin to a child who has been allowed to eat 100% of a cake for fifty years, now being asked to share 1/13th of it and throwing a tantrum.
I have to agree. I sympathise with the unease that some feel with the change from a male to a female Doctor but I do feel that it’s the kind of discomfort that needs to be examined sometimes . There’s something lazy about even refusing to keep an open mind about the possibility that this change might actually be to the show’s benefit, instead of this dismissal of it as ‘political correctness’.
20 July 2017 at 13:51 #61166@nick and @cloisterbell —
It’s true that we won’t really know until Xmas at the earliest what JW will be like as the Doctor one way or the other. PC’s Doctor, for example, was not quite what I was expecting but he still surpassed my expectations. I was dreading Matt Smith and he knocked it out the park in his first 20 minutes.
But as to JW being able to do quirky, I recommend you both watch either Adult Life Skills or the short Emotional Fusebox on which it is based (and which @craig has posted above) as I think they prove that Jodie is more than capable of quirk, perhaps more so than PW-B
20 July 2017 at 12:40 #61162@wolfweed–
That’s excellent news. Mind you, there would have been a positive uproar if it had been otherwise. But am I the only one surprised at how low Capaldi’s salary was?
I’m sure there are many who would have preferred, say, Phoebe Waller-Bridge in the part. And I myself was a bit worried that she might have been a bit ‘girl next door’ when the possibility of her getting the part was first mooted. But having just watched her in Adult Life Skills, I’m now totally sold. I’ve seen her in a few things now and she’s been uniformally excellent. I’d say of all the names I’ve seen bandied about and going by her track record, she’s probably the best choice for the role, man or woman.
20 July 2017 at 11:16 #61158@craig– That’s a lovely little short too, isn’t it? I definitely prefer the full feature though and I’m really impressed that they managed to extend it without it feeling like a smallish idea that’s just been padded out. JW aside, I’m just surprised that I hadn’t heard of it before because it really gladdens my heart to see there is still a film-making culture (I hesitate to call it an industry any more) that produces stuff like this.
On the general discussions of how JW will ‘be’ the Doctor — while the title ‘Time Lord/Lady’ doesn’t bother me that much, I definitely agree that it’s perhaps time that it was retired — although I doubt it will be as it’s become such an integral part of the show. It was originally introduced to convey the idea of a vague ‘space aristocracy’ (which I guess tells you a lot about still-prevailing attitudes in Britain at the time) but is now a little problematic, I think. I’d argue that part of what SM was doing in Hell Bent, as well as re-establishing the Doctor as a renegade from his own people, was cutting the Time Lords down to size, and deliberately siding the Doctor with ‘the people’ rather than the aristocracy.
While I like the idea that the Doctor might not notice she’s female initially (and I really hope we don’t get a ‘look at those’ boob-squeeze scene) I don’t think it’s feasible or desirable for the Doctor’s new gender not to be addressed. I agree with @nick that it shouldn’t be the character’s defining characteristic and the approach should be ‘this is still the Doctor who just happens to be female now’. But every Doctor is defined by an extent to how others perceive them — T Baker by his googly bohemianism, Pertwee by his assumed ‘authority’, Davison and Smith by their youth. One of the best and most compelling reasons for there being a female Doctor is that it opens up new avenues of story-telling, creates a different dynamic. Referring back to an earlier discussion about the recent questioning of the Doctor’s old ‘patriarchal’ demeanour, is the 13th Doc going to be able to stride into situations and assume a position of authority or command without being questioned on it. Or does it mean a resort to the psychic paper (which I think is suddenly going to become problematic)? I think the sheer fact of the Doctor’s gender and issues of power and patriarchy within SF tropes are going to bring something new and interesting to the show. (I suspect that CC might be (re)reading Banks’s Culture novels even as we speak for some inspiration.)
@cloisterbell–
Welcome to the site! There’s really to my mind nothing to suggest that the casting of a female Doctor is a politicised decision. But be that as it may, does it really matter? At this point, casting another male Doctor would have been just as political. And I’d argue it’s a fallacy that Doctor Who somehow exists outside the realms of politics (of the identity variety or otherwise). It doesn’t and it never has.
There is hardly anyone stating that they are in favour of a female Doctor, but think that she is a poor choice
I’m afraid that’s demonstrably untrue. You only have to look at this site to see that the majority of opinion is favourable. And as far as I can see, if you venture beyond the ravings on the right wing news sites (which can safely be discounted), then the reaction has been overwhelmingly, even on occasion joyfully, positive.
If a little girl can only have a female as a hero, isn’t there also something wrong there in terms of gender attitudes?
Well, if anything this whole episode has shown that there is something shamefully wrong with gender attitudes, particularly among sections of the fan community. But you only have to talk to some of our long-standing members like @scaryb and @juniperfish to see that for the duration of the show girls have been able to take men as role models. Why should it be that this is not the case for boys? I fail to see how a boy viewer won’t be able to take JW as a role model. The values that the Doctor personifies are not gender specific and never really have been. It also begs the question, that while girls can clearly take men as role models, does it necessarily follow that they should be obliged to have nothing but male role models? I don’t think it’s unreasonable for them to have their own from time to time.
I would have preferred that Romana came back to the Tardis alongside a male Doctor or that she was given the lead role in her own spin off series
But isn’t that still just ring-fencing the character of the Doctor? Placing him on the pedestal and continuing to position Romana as ‘nearly as good but not quite’ as him. Plus the spin-off idea is pretty much a non-starter to my mind. The Beeb can barely afford to make one Who show at the moment, let alone what would essentially be two.
Personally I think it would be more interesting to have Romana return as the male companion. That would be an interesting reversal of a previous dynamic. I wouldn’t be crazy about Kris Marshall being a companion (I don’t have anything against this guy, honest!!) because a BT-esque or Rory-like dopey guy companion would further incense the already-hurting broflakes and I don’t think a ‘huh. stupid men’ vibe is really going to work at the moment. I think a male companion is definitely required but I think he’s going to have to be more on the capable side, without being overbearing. Marshall would be a great and welcome addition if they steer away from a ‘bumbling oaf’ vibe. The characterisation of the male companion is going to have to be smart — Bill Potts smart.
19 July 2017 at 11:27 #61094@craig– yeah, it’s a lovely little film and it’s what really sold me on JW when I watched it. Broadchurch proves she can do dramatic, Black Mirror proves that she can do SF and this proves that she can do quirky and humorous.
18 July 2017 at 23:02 #61069@craig– good stuff. Saves my typing fingers….
18 July 2017 at 23:01 #61068@whisht— that. is. awesome.
18 July 2017 at 22:22 #61065@nick–
I’m not sure I agree. Any opinion, on any subject, should be capable of, and I think probably subject to, some kind of examination, even if it is only a personal one. Otherwise it can become little more than a prejudice, even if it didn’t start out that way. I mean, it’s my opinion that I deserve a pay rise but if I go into my boss and express that opinion the first thing he’s going to ask me is ‘why’ and if I don’t have a good answer prepared then you can be pretty sure no cash will be forthcoming.
And in the context of this site, take you and I for instance, we’ve had lots of great and highly enjoyable discussions. We’ve not always agreed completely but we often have. You’ve definitely changed my mind about some stuff and maybe I’ve done the same to you. But if I’d said ‘this is my opinion. End of.’ without giving any reasons for believing that then no discussion is possible. You’d probably be a bit disinclined to carry on conversing with me but even if you did I’ve given you no raw material to work with. I’d argue that this site is at its best when people offer some context or support for their POV and I’d be hard-pressed to think of a long-term contributor who didn’t use this approach.
But I take your basic point and I think you’re right. The Argument To Tradition is fair enough to an extent but I can’t help but feel in nine times out of ten that it merits a little more prodding, a little more examination.
18 July 2017 at 21:35 #61061A final word on the ‘ism’ argument (at least from me) and then I’m opting out of it. A few of the posts on this thread have gone something like ‘I take exception to being called a sexist/misogynist because I don’t think a female Doctor is a good idea’. But let’s just clarify a few things.
1. There is no post that I can see of anyone saying ‘you’re a sexist/misogynist’. Calling yourself one to pre-empt criticism or defend your stance is nothing but strawman-ism and the sort of nonsense that the so-called president of the USA gets up to. Say something bullshit that is easily disprovable but pre-emptively bulletproof it in faux-offence. To which I say, fine, knock yourself out but don’t try to pretend that you haven’t been given a hearing here or that people have gone out of their way to insult you. They haven’t.
2. You’re perfectly entitled to think that JW won’t be a good Doctor (though how you can come to that conclusion without seeing a single line of her in the actual part is kind of beyond me). But if you don’t want an assumption of sexism to surround your views then provide some argument, some proof, to back up your case. Or to put it another way, if you turned round and said ‘women shouldn’t be soldiers’ or ‘women shouldn’t be engineers’ unless you provide some seriously solid empirical evidence to back up your claim you shouldn’t be surprised if people assume that there’s some sexism at play. I don’t really see this is any different. Back up your argument and back it up to the hilt. Or else people will call you on it. If you think there’s a good reason why there shouldn’t be a female Doctor, that’s fine, but back it up with chapter and verse from the show. And don’t be surprised if someone who disagrees with you does the same. That’s pretty much the mission statement of this site.
Oh, and this is pretty funny too…
OK, that’s all I wanted to say on this score. I was now going to go off and write a s10 retrospective blog to give us discussion hub for the Christmas Special and beyond. Is that something that people will think useful? (I’m also happy for someone to take the actual writing duties if they’d prefer btw.)
18 July 2017 at 20:54 #61055@wolfweed — well, if you live in PC world you’re never going to go short of a flashdrive, so I say it has a lot to recommend it.
@rorysmith and @drben — there is a definite point that old monsters can be re-used a bit too much. s10 had five of them this year and that could be considered a bit much — although I’d argue that all of them were used brilliantly. It’s worth bearing in mind though that their use is partly because of fan demands to see them, partly because the showrunners and writers are more often than not fans themselves and want to use them again but also, in the case of the Daleks, because there is a contractual obligation to use them at least once per series.
But I agree that more new monsters would be a good idea. The only trouble is that no one can really predict what works and what doesn’t. Who could have predicted that the Weeping Angels would be so successful. I get the impression that the production team would have liked the Fisher King, and the Monks to have been big hits (in the same way that RTD desperately wanted the Slitheen and the Ood to be popular) but in the end it’s up to the audience to decide which creatures they like and which they don’t really care about.
18 July 2017 at 12:44 #61000@glasgowboy — I argued against your arguments above and I don’t think I need to do so again. You have provided no arguments to support your position except ‘I think JW will be bad so there.’ And ‘I wrote a thesis once’ is not an argument or a defence. You should presumably know that if you’ve actually had any kind of thesis submitted for peer review. And for the record, I didn’t call you sexist or racist. I suggested you were possibly operating from sexist assumptions because you have offered no real argument to support your stance beyond ‘JW baaaaad’.
And everyone is welcome here and no opinion is more privileged than anyone else. But everyone is expected to argue their case or at least give some kind reasoning. Myself and others have engage with your points and offered a counter view. That’s not you being dismissed as sexist or anything else. That’s you being accepted as part of the community and engaging with your points. There’s lots of debate on this site but it is for the large part courteous and it is considered. I’d argue that, while you’ve done that on other other threads and you clearly haven’t done it here. Saying ‘I think this. Get over it’ is not an option.
But really no one’s called you sexist, misogynist or anything. Your attitude on this thread has been a combative and defensive one which amounted to a kneejerk dislike of the casting and preemptively accusing who challenges your view as dismissing you as a misogynist. It’s classic Trump-ism, actually. But really no one has actually done that. They’ve engaged with you, disagreed with you and then continued the general discussion.
(And I mentioned the etiquette above as I am one of the site’s mods and keeping that kind of thing to a minimum is one of the things I do here. For the record, I don’t consider anything I’ve posted above to contravene our site rules but I do consider some of your remarks to @Thane15 to come pretty close to it.)
And as @wolfweed says, all Doctors are, at least initially, put on one-year contracts. That’s been standard for every actor to take the part. Faith or lack thereof doesn’t enter into it.
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This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by
JimTheFish. Reason: edited for balance
18 July 2017 at 11:26 #60997@craig — Just watched Adult Life Skills this week and it’s great. What’s more, JW is great in it too. Well worth a watch. I think some discussion of JW’s work is a great idea, though maybe we should just treat Broadchurch as one entity and people can discuss whatever aspects of it they wish to within that?
Personally, I think it’s too early for the Chibbers retrospective and we should give SM his last six months in the sun first. Don’t know what others think. How about a s10 retrospective blog/thread which will give everyone somewhere to bonkerise in the run-up to Christmas?
17 July 2017 at 21:38 #60969@juniperfish–
Yes, that’s a scene I’d like to see….
Oh, and I’ve been constantly reminded of this quote of Jane Espenson’s today. Just saying…
If we can’t write diversity into sci-fi, then what’s the point? You don’t create new worlds to give them all the same limits of the old ones.
17 July 2017 at 20:09 #60951@nick– I may have a few reservations about CC’s grasp of narrative logic and structure on occasion but in terms of character I think he’s probably second to none, superior, in fact, to RTD and SM. Look at how well he tended to write the Ponds. In fact, while most of his stories have some kind of WTF? moment, they were almost always great on character, right down to the most expendable red shirt. So in terms of the handling of the Doctor’s character I’m pretty confident that he’s going to ace it.
But you’re right that we have to stop thinking in terms of the ‘first female Doctor’ and more in terms of ‘the next Doctor who just happens to being played by a female actor’.
17 July 2017 at 19:05 #60941@craig– yes, I saw that. Truly depressing. Makes me quite ashamed of my once-profession. Don’t recall Eccleston or Tennant getting this treatment when they were cast and both had similar roles that could have been cast up. Still, I’m sure (hope) that JW will have been braced for all this crap and it would have been discussed in detail behind the scenes before going public and that they were expecting this kind of thing. I imagine the strategy for unveiling this now is for the various knuckle-heads and broflakes to get this out of their system in the next few weeks so that they can get back down to business as usual as quickly as possible.
But I do have to say I really am quite depressed that there’s still such a significant portion of the fanbase (and the professional media) who are still being so backward and retrograde in this day and age. I would have hoped for better.
@frostfair–
Sometimes I wonder if a larger pool of companions would work so they can be mixed up depending on dramatic requirements
Yes, I did wonder if they were going to start going for that approach in Capaldi’s first year but it seems not. Maybe it would make things a bit too fragmented? Bill worked this year, I think, because they really took the time and effort to develop the growing relationship between the Doctor and herself. But I am very interested to learn what CC has in mind companion-wise. I imagine we’ll hear very soon.
17 July 2017 at 18:10 #60936@thane15 — great post. Well said.
@exfan — love the name change. Hope your faith in the future is justified. (Actually, I’m sure it will be.) And yes, the wait is going to be excruciating. Not sure I agree about Capaldi being the ‘worst Doctor’. Like @mirime I’d count him as one of the best.
@frostfair — I think I’d love to see Bill back and don’t think her sexuality should necessarily be an issue. Rose and Martha having the hots for the Doctor was never an issue so don’t think Bill’s should be either. I think what Bill and Nardole have shown this year that the best dynamic for modern Who is two companions, one of either gender and I’d lay odds that this is what CC goes for. For that reason, I suspect that Bill may not be back (or at least not immediately and probably not permanently) which is a shame because Pearl absolutely knocked it out of the park.
@glasgowboy–
This concerns the changing of a character that has been formed over 50 years
Yes, and there’s nothing about a gender-switch that contradicts any part of the fundamentals of that character as it has been portrayed on-screen.
Dr Who was (and still can be ) an excellent science fiction programme
And changing the gender of the character isn’t going to affect that in the slightest. But as @thane15 points out, it’s not really science fiction — you could count the times the show has been pure SF on one hand — it’s far more of a fantasy series that borrows the trappings of science fiction from time to time.
At the moment it is nothing less than a column in the Guardian. Dr Who has been replaced by Doctor Right On
My initial reaction to that is ‘so what’? But it shows a misunderstanding of the long-term nature of the show anyway. Who has always had a distinct, liberal-humanist heart. And that’s been the case since the very first episode.
Oh, and if anyone wants to fling the sexist, misogynist, bigoted card my way then I can direct them to some a very interesting thesis that deals with the subjugation of women and their celluloid representation and oppression on screen in a phallocentric society. I know cos I wrote it.
Well, it rather depends on the conclusions you reached, doesn’t it? Why not post a link and people can decide for themselves? Besides which, article notwithstanding, it doesn’t mean that you’re not operating under sexist assumptions now. Frankly, this statement of yours sounds like it falls suspiciously into the ‘but some of my best friends are black’ camp of argument.
The whole gender was shoehorned in on the last series to justify its presentation
No, it wasn’t. In the wider world, it’s a concept that’s been mooted since 1980. But in-universe, it’s a concept that was first explicitly established in The Doctor’s Wife, and that was way back in 2011. So, as a concept, it’s been canon for the last six years at least. (And isn’t it odd that the shoe-horn argument is only ever used in this context? I don’t remember anyone bitching about the sudden introduction of the Time Lords in 1969 and complaining about how it directly contradicted what Susan said in An Unearthly Child. I think that’s because, Who is quirkily unique in its make-up in that it didn’t emerge fully formed with a series bible etc but has evolved over the years, with subsequent production teams adding and subtracting their own elements to the mix. That’s essentially what’s happening now and I suspect that that is the core of the show’s longevity.)
Sounds a bit like those experts who said Coca Cola had to change their recipe – and we know how that worked out
Um, nope, not really the same thing at all, is it?
This is NOT a gender issue, it’s a miscasting issue. It’s the BBC thinking they need to make a statement when none is needed. Frankly, it’s a mess
Well, no it isn’t. And it’s sounding very much like a gender issue for you to me. If you think it’s a miscasting issue then perhaps you’d care to explain why (that’s what we do here). It’s hard to see how you can make that statement either way before the actor involved has even uttered a line.
I will not castigate those who continue to watch and accept/pretend this is the same character. Dr Who has changed forever
Yes, just as it did when Patrick Troughton took the lead. Or Jon Pertwee. Or Tom Baker. Or, in fact, any of the actors who have taken the part.
@greyhoundjon — great post and welcome!
17 July 2017 at 14:00 #60901I think many on here are doing well in engaging with the one-post wonders, who will no doubt slink back off to the Daily Heil after they’ve had their little rants. But just a reminder to them that while they’re here, they might like to take note of the site etiquette. Particularly the clause on personal abuse of members. (Yes, I’m looking at you @jim4)
But on a general note, this is not stunt casting. It’s not rewriting Who history. This has been telegraphed as something that could happen for years now. And as @nick says, it’s not liberal ‘pinko’ bias. It’s not ‘political correctness’. It’s not a ‘victory for the social justice warriors. (and I’ve never understood how those are necessarily bad things anyway? How can social justice be bad? And given that ‘political correctness’ is essentially ‘treating others with respect and operating on a default setting of dignity and equality’ I don’t see how that can be a bad thing either. Quite apart from anything else, if you are opposed to such things then why the hell are you watching Who anyway, as it’s a show that quite clearly champions those sentiments above all else.) Nick is right. A liberal, humanist agenda, as first personified by Ian and Barbara and then the Doctor, is in the very show’s DNA.
As to the dynamic of the show changing. Well, good. That’s what has always happened. That’s what the show has thrived upon. That’s what’s enabled it to survive for 50 years. Troughton’s arrival changed the dynamic of the show dramatically. Pertwee’s era was another striking sea change. The show has survived by to some extent holding up a mirror to the era in which it is made. And this is just the latest example of that. And to all those who say they’ll stop watching, well, a) I’m not sure I believe you and b) given that kind bloody minded petulance, I’m not sure you’ll be missed.
To echo @juniperfish, all you have to do is look at Christel Dee’s reaction to the news in the fan show, or any of the other reaction videos posted above, the show has had millions of fans throughout its run who have taken a male Doctor as a role model, mostly because they had no choice, and I don’t see how that’s going to be any different for generations of boys out there. (Because that would suggest that they are somehow deficient or inferior in terms of imagination and empathy, and that surely can’t be the case, can it?)
@nick and @blenkinsopthebrave — I actually think I’m rowing back on my ‘girl next door’ misgivings about JW. Partially because I watched Attack the Block again last night which helps show a different, although not necessarily Doctorish, side to her, but also because CC clearly picked her after working with her for a number of years and because she aced the audition apparently (rather like Matt Smith). I think she’s going to bring something very different to the part.
Anyway. here’s Colin Baker’s reaction, if it hasn’t been posted already.
And here’s Alex Kingston’s:
16 July 2017 at 21:55 #60820@wolfweed–
In light of today, Douglas Mackinnon’s Who-related announcement had better be good or Twitter is going to go something like…
16 July 2017 at 21:07 #60816@craig–
she said that was definitely not the new look
Boo! I’m all about the coat and hoodie! But, nah, one thing about the AG show is that they’ve always rocked the costume. The only time it was a bit meh (for me) was when they put Matt in that all-burgundy garb. And I definitely second the kick-ass boots concept.
I was really lukewarm about Chibnall taking over the show but I have to admit that now I’m psyched. Really looking forward to it.
16 July 2017 at 20:28 #60810@exfan — scepticism is good. Pretty much always. I would have been extremely sceptical if Kris Marshall had been announced today but I’d like to think I’d also have been keeping an open mind, which is also a must. So, yeah, do give JW a chance. I’ve got a feeling she’ll merit it.
As to Hartnell convincing from the start, I think most of the actors playing the part did that too — even Colin Baker. There’s no reason to suggest Whittaker won’t do the same when we see her for real. Besides which, how things were done in 1963 is no indicator of how things should be done 50-odd years later. Just consider how shocking seeing Patrick Troughton must have been in 1966 — no less than seeing JW today, I’d wager. (It’d be great to see a mock-up of a 60’s-style Twitter feed showing that.)
On a personal note, I just really wish JW was (is?) having a role bigger than a last-minute regeneration in the Christmas special. It’d be great to see some interaction with Capaldi — and especially Bradley too. But I guess that may not happen.
And I must say I do like the coat and hoodie look. I would quite like that to be her look but I suppose it’s a bit too similar to Capaldi’s and was just there for the reveal.
16 July 2017 at 18:56 #60800Just to reiterate my extreme delight with this move.
And all those in the ‘RIP Dr Who. I’ll never watch again. Waaah brigade’, perhaps you should ask yourself why this news provokes such a visceral, knee-jerk reaction in you. Might be a sign that you have to take a long, hard look at some of your attitudes.
And perhaps you should also take on board the fact that the show at its heart is about a) change b) a resistance to intolerance and c) an undying sense of wonder. If you can’t approach the show in that spirit then the chances are you’ve never really been a true fan of it at all.
(And the argument that there’s never been a female Bond/Sherlock/delete as applicable doesn’t wash either. First of all, there’s no reason why there couldn’t be in the future. And besides which, the basic — and eminently established — concept of this show puts Who in the unique situation of being able to explore such concepts as gender change.
In short, to my mind, there’s no serious, conceivable reason — beyond basic sexism — that there shouldn’t be a female Doctor.)
16 July 2017 at 16:33 #60754I think a really good choice personally. I’m looking forward to it.
Commiserations to Kris Marshall though. (One thing’s for sure, I doubt he’ll even want to hear the words ‘Doctor Who’ for quite some time.)
16 July 2017 at 10:49 #60719@craig and @wolfweed–
Yeah, saw those alternate titles yesterday and they made me chuckle (in a depressed kind of way).
But all this gnashing of intolerant teeth just makes me think that it really is time for this nettle to be seized, if only for the issue to be settled and that it will just cease to be a big deal in the future.
I think my problem with Marshall is not that he’d be a necessarily bad Doctor (he’d probably be very good) just that he’s not the right one for this moment in time.
@optimall — you make a good point about tolerance, race and persecution and the show will definitely need to continue addressing those issue if there’s a PoC as the Doctor or the companion. And to be honest, I think the last series judged it pretty well with Bill.
16 July 2017 at 00:25 #6069116 July 2017 at 00:12 #60688@nick and @wolfweed– the late odds and the CC connection make me increasingly think it’s going to be JW, and it wouldn’t be a choice I’d be particularly unhappy with.
Though I must admit that while I don’t think he’s a particularly promising choice, I do feel somewhat sorry for Kris Marshall for being pilloried online as ‘the probably crap Doctor’ even before he’s taken the role (or not as the case may be).
And speaking as an occasional journalist, I’m finding this whole feeding frenzy increasingly unedifying. In future I think I’d like the Beeb to have a new Doctor sorted before the departure of the old one and make a low-key dual announcement out of it.
15 July 2017 at 11:59 #60671@nick–
I’d recommend checking out JW in the Black Mirror episode The Entire History of You. Hell, I’d recommend checking it out anyway as a piece of quite cool speculative SF. I think she still has enough edge that she could bring something really interesting to the character of the Doctor. The more I think of it, the more I think she’d be a good choice, with no real idea yet of what she might bring to the party.
With Marshall, on the other hand, that unless he pulls some 360 degree shift in his previous style, what you’re going to get is a feckless, bumbling amalgam of Smith, Tennant and Tom Baker, with perhaps a bit of Davison thrown in. And personally I think it’s the last thing I’m interested in seeing right now.
@wolfweed–
RE. film. Yes, that’s interesting. And it’s worth bearing in mind, unlike at other times when the idea of a film has been mooted, there seems to be a set of people with a strong production track record on Who suddenly available and also being very cagey about their immediate projects. (Worth bearing in mind that Brian Minchin has just moved permanently to Hartswood Films too.) All could be pie in the sky, of course, and I’m willing to bet that Mackinnon’s announcement next week will be filming the first block of s11 but it’s still nice to speculate.
So, maybe Christmas is not the end of Capaldi and we’re going to see him go off to play his part in the end of the Time War while we continue to follow the next Doctor on the small(er) screen. It struck me that there’s still an assumption that we have to have this chronological progression from one Doctor to the next via the regeneration sequence. But what if we meet 13 sometime during their established incarnation and then just stick with them at the end of the episode, leaving the ‘gap’ of 12’s end to be resolved later. (Yes, I realise I’m not being hopelessly fanciful here, but if you can’t do that here, where can you do it?)
15 July 2017 at 11:38 #60670Really don’t think that’s an issue. We saw Bill’s first scenes ‘out of sequence’, after all…
14 July 2017 at 23:46 #60660I do wonder if it’ll be another on-the-sofa cringefest a la PC’s announcement or whether we might get a little dramatic snippet in the style of Pearl’s introduction. (I know which I’d prefer.)
Oh, and many congratulations for Sunday, @cathannabel….
14 July 2017 at 23:26 #60658@nick and @wolfweed–
Hmm, not a terrible choice at all. And yes, interesting that she’s just shot really high into the running after being for the most part only mentioned idly in passing before. That would tally with what happened shortly before PC’s announcement too, with a last-minute flurry of betting on him as the news started to get out and people tried to make a few quid. That makes her a credible possibility I reckon. And the CC connection makes sense too.
@nick, in terms of a rush announcement, I think I was mostly thinking of Phoebe Waller-Bridge. That Newsnight piece seemed quite confident for something culled from an old-ish YouTube video and that made me think there might be something to it. And as it seemed to break just on the cusp of Wimbledon, this would be pretty much the first time they’d be able to get something into the schedules was my thinking. Of course this is more than likely me putting two and two together and making a gazillion.
My preference would be for PW-B as she seems to have that edge of weirdness over JW, who seems a bit girl next door to me (although both Broadchurch and Black Mirror showed that she’s more than got the acting chops for it). I just hope they do show a bit of courage, that’s all and don’t settle for a Doctor Vanilla.
14 July 2017 at 19:53 #60634@wolfweed–
That’s interesting. It could just be that he’s filming the first block of s11, but is that a reason for tweetable excitement? Maybe it is…
What else could it be though? Spin off? Movie?
14 July 2017 at 19:35 #60631@craig and @missrori–
I’d lay odds that 13 will almost certainly be making an appearance at SDCC.
Also the timing to me still suggests that this is the first time the Beeb could conceivably schedule a Doc announcement, without it stuffing up Wimbledon. It suggests rush-job rather than careful plan to me….
14 July 2017 at 19:10 #60621Well, that is a surprise. It thought they would try to keep it hushed up if they could. Maybe they thought that it wasn’t do-able to manage that. That suggests that they’ll be filming s11 soon and the cat would be out of the bag anyway or that the name is already out there (or as good as) and that this is the first opportunity to give an official announcement (which suggests Waller-Bridge to me).
@wolfweed — does the trig suggest three lines (timelines?) coming together? That seems to suggest theories of three Doctors coming together at Christmas. Although the No.10 bit suggests that Theresa May is going to stand down as PM to be the 13th Doc. (Please be wrong. Please be wrong.)
14 July 2017 at 00:13 #60602Oh, and this might be of interest, if it hasn’t been posted already:
13 July 2017 at 23:11 #60601I can’t believe I didn’t leave a comment on this before because it’s really rather excellent and I think easily Gatiss’s best Who-related work. And agree with @janetteb that Bradley is great at conveying not just Hartnell but Hartnell as the Doctor. His last few scenes in this are just heart-breaking — and his ‘I don’t want to go’ moment genuinely tear-inducing (cf Tennant’s version). And like @bluesqueakpip, I’m really looking forward to seeing what he does with Doctor 1 proper at Christmas because all the indications are that he won’t just do a pastiche a la Hurndall but bring something of his own to the part.
Capaldi and Moffat and Gatiss will be remembered for much in this period of Who’s history, but they should definitely be remembered for the revival of the first Doctor, who for a long time has been remembered as a historical curio, as the antecedent to better things almost. It’s great that he’s been brought front and centre again, remembered as a great Doctor in his own right.
The only thing that doesn’t work in this is Reece Sheersmith as Troughton. I don’t think it was strictly necessary and it kind of broke the moment of Hartnell’s passing slightly. Bradley was Hartnell. Sheersmith was just dodgy cosplay.
And while Bradley deserves all the kudos going, I think it’s a shame that Sacha Dhawan and Jessica Raine get unfairly overlooked in this because they’re both fantastic. (Am I the only one who wonders why Raine gets left off lists of possible Doctors? Because I think she’d be great.)
My only other downspots in this are Brian Cox who chews the scenery a bit too much for my liking (but I guess as Sydney Newman it’s only to be expected I guess) and while I get that Gatiss points out that it was impossible to namecheck everyone involved at the birth of the show, I can’t help but feel that it’s a mistake for David Whitaker not to get some kind acknowledgement because he was a key figure in the show’s early years — and his influence was felt right up to Pertwee’s opening year.
13 July 2017 at 18:34 #60599@bluesqueakpip and @janetteb —
John Hurt’s War Doctor was possible because of the hiatus; any ‘future’ Doctor could equally be slotted in to the sequence the next time the BBC decides to rest Doctor Who for a few years
Yes, I suppose that’s possible. Though my feeling is that if SM has been about one thing during his tenure as showrunner, it’s been about tidying up continuity, with him even taking the time to sort out everything from the leaving of Gallifrey, to regeneration limits to UNIT dating. Given that, I just can’t see him leaving any kind of continuity bomb for future showrunners.
I did think what he might have tried would be some alternative regenerations. Round about the time of the Lie of the Land, I think it was posited that a return to the Monks’ simulations might happen and that a regeneration within it might have given the opportunity for some ‘could be’ Doctors (or maybe would throw up so many variables as to break the simulation). That, I think, would have been interesting and is somewhat of a wasted opportunity. SM could have used some of the endlessly cited ‘dream-casting clickbait Doctors’ we hear so much about it in a Curse of Fatal Death-like way.
@nick‘s idea of a Watcher-like figure is possible too and I think we may see something like that – and it would play into the hidden in plain sight aspect of this regeneration that we’ve been talking about. But in the end I suspect that SM, as always, will do something playful with regeneration that we haven’t thought of yet.
13 July 2017 at 14:17 #60594@bluesqueakpip–
Rachel Talalay may simply mean that they are going to do the regeneration scene as close as possible to broadcast date – and if the next Doctor wasn’t in her shooting schedule, she has no ‘need-to-know’.
No, I get that. And if the regeneration is indeed something like the final scene of the special then she may not even be involved at all. But if, as mooted above, the 13th Doc plays an integral part of the story of the special then I think we have to assume that Rachel is, um, telling a few porkies. But I’m inclined to believe her.
The problem with meeting a future Doctor, to me, is that it locks future showrunners into accommodating them at some point (let’s call it Valeyard Syndrome). Not beyond the realms of possibility, of course but I’m not sure SM would want to inflict that on one of his successors. You can see with The Curator that he kept it suitably vague, presumably so that showrunners don’t have to accommodate an incarnation that looks and sounds a bit like Tom Baker in the next 50 odd years.
13 July 2017 at 14:01 #60592Either of the first two would work with the coloured scarf but you’re right that the third would need the reddish scarf to be accurate.
I would also recommend this site for some excellent cosplay stuff (it’s apparently very good at screen-accurate reproductions and has a big Who-in-everything-but-name section but it is quite pricey)
http://www.magnoliclothiers.com/
13 July 2017 at 13:46 #60591@craig, @nick @blenkinsopthebrave et al–
Loving those ideas, though the idea that 12 will meet 13 in the Christmas spesh (an idea I really, really like) would seem to suggest that Rachel Talalay is being a lying liar when she says she has no idea who 13 is. That’s not beyond the realms of possibility, of course and SM himself has set something of a precedent on that score.
I wonder if it’s not more likely that we won’t see 13 at all at Christmas and the introduction of a previous Doctor(s) is to offset any viewer impatience for them ‘to get on with’ the regeneration.
But I doubt we’ll learn anything more solid now. They’ve either managed to pull off filming it without any leaks or they’re holding off doing the filming until the last minute. I’m no expert, but I don’t think the actual CGI and postproduction of a regeneration would actually be that complex if they keep the set-up simple and avoid exploding TARDISes etc.
I think @craig‘s right though and that the priority now seems clearly to keep the regeneration a secret, partly because as Craig says they don’t want it to overshadow Capaldi’s final months on the show and partly because a surprise Doctor will generate some juicy headlines and viewer interest for Christmas Day.
The only thing that could stuff it up now, aside from a leak and anyone who leaked this, I suspect, would be looking at a firing, is if they have to start filming s11 before Christmas and falls foul of cameraphone arsery….
12 July 2017 at 15:32 #60557Interesting tidbit. Even Rachel Talalay doesn’t know who the next Doctor is. I suppose these days you don’t really need the actors anywhere near each other. Or maybe it’s a trick and there is no ‘next’ Doctor…
11 July 2017 at 01:20 #60541Thanks to @wolfweed for the behind the scenes stuff. I’d never seen that either. Doesn’t SM look so young and cherubic there?
This is actually a great shout from @janetteb because apart from being very silly indeed, there are lots of clues and callbacks to what kind of showrunner SM would eventually become.
I have to admit, I was never that crazy on the more broader, more scatological humour of CoFD and I think it gets old pretty quickly here. Similarly, I have to put my hand up to never really liking the smart-arse sixth-form humour of Richard Curtis and Ben Elton either (I realise its sacrilege but aside from a few truly inspired moments, I’ve never really had a massive amount of love for Black Adder. Which is why Vincent and the Doctor, which I had been dreading, turned out to be such a delightful surprise.) So, some of the early stuff about ‘bribing the architect’ palled very quickly for me too and it felt a little like SM doing a ventriloquist act, like he was ‘doing a Richard Curtis’. And you only have to look at Coupling or SM’s own Children In Need specials where his humour is very much his own to see the difference, I think.
But what does work here, oddly enough, is the fan service, the good-humouredly poking of fun at the tropes of BG Who. CoFD interestingly exists in that hinterland between the two series, where the BG series is this source of nostalgic mockery but has yet to be reclaimed by the AG series. Thus the deliberately shonky TARDISes, the hammy Master, even the title are nice little digs at the creakiness of the show’s format at that point.
I suppose watching it now, with the benefit of hindsight as we reach the end of SM tenure as showrunner is how much of it is foreshadowed here. First of all, there is the Doctor with a romantic entanglement — something, as discussed earlier today – that falls more in RTD’s purview but which SM is clearly saying is something that the show can no longer avoid addressing.
And then there’s the Master. I love Jonathan Pryce’s performance but I think it emphasises a problem that both RTD and SM later had — that if you have a Master in full moustache-twirling mode, you then have a problem in actually figuring out what to do with him. What’s foreshadowed here is SM’s eventual solution to this — here playing for laughs the unrequited, latent attraction between the characters, something that he would examine (slightly) more seriously with Missy.
The other key take-home from CoFD is perhaps the fetishisation of regeneration (something that I think is going slightly too far these days, although only partially SM’s fault). The multiple regenerations are fun and I’m still surprised that we didn’t see something of the like done for real at the end of Capaldi’s run. And of course it’s the first outing for a female Doctor too — something SM clearly wanted to try and which, I’d be willing to lay odds, he does for real at Christmas. What’s fun here though is seeing him run through a fan’s wishlist of possible Who’s and seeing how they would perhaps fare playing the Doctor for real — Rowan Atkinson (surprisingly good), Richard E Grant (predictably terrible), Hugh Grant (meh) and Joanna Lumley (bloody excellent).
And there’s the ‘three settings’ joke, which I have to say is still my favourite.
10 July 2017 at 13:07 #60508@serahni et al–
I personally wouldn’t be too down on Rose. I think Billie Piper played her brilliantly and I think much of the show’s dramatic success in those early years is as down to her as it is to anything else. And her return does pay off really rather well — for me, it’s one of the highpoints of Journey’s End (the other being Donna’s memory wipe) in what for me is a rather overwrought finale.
I don’t really have a problem with the way she treated Mickey either. If anything, it makes her real. . We don’t treat the people we love all that well a lot of the time. We often don’t know what we have until we lose it and so on. It’s a testament to RTD’s writing if anything. Same with Amy and Rory. I remember a lot of people complaining about how Amy treated Rory but that to me was missing the point. We saw them mature as a couple over their time.
With a couple of exceptional episodes, I find I seldom return to the Tennant and Rose episodes these days. I just find 10 such an annoying Doctor who hasn’t weathered that well. (Though as Terrance Dicks pointed out, Doctors seemed to go in and out of fashion. No doubt I’ll end up loving him again at some point.) But he and Rose were perfect for the time and their plotline was one that the show had to go through, should have, in fact, gone through, long before it did. And it was necessary to lay the groundwork for future relationship arcs. Through no fault of Freema Ageyma, Martha never really worked. But you couldn’t have had the Doctor and River, or the Doctor, Amy and Rory if you hadn’t had the Doctor and Rose first. I think @thane15 is right that there’s lots from that era that worked and worked well.
It’s important to have a little context though I think. There’s a small knot of diehards on the Graun boards who it seems won’t be happy until modern Who is a carbon copy of what it was in the 1970s. Arguments with them tend to make me seem too down on that era, probably unfairly. The Baker and Sladen/Jamieson/Tamm era is probably what got a lot of us into Who at the first place and it was great at the time. Watching it back now, we’ll tend to mostly see its faults, which are manifold, not what carried us along at the time.That, I suspect, is a process that never really ends.
Phew. Apologies for the length.
10 July 2017 at 00:18 #60501After the last flurry of post-s10 art, I felt inspired to do a new Whoodle (after realising that the last time I did one was just after Smithy had left the role). Where does the time go?
10 July 2017 at 00:11 #60500@serahni–
You can probably count me among your number too. I have a funny feeling that there’s an old and occasionally heated dispute with @htpbdet somewhere on the site about the relative merits of the 10/Rose scenario. My feeling is that it was something that had to happen to drag Who into the modern age and that RTD should be commended for grasping that nettle. It was too bad that he could never quite figure out where to go afterwards and couldn’t quite put his Rose fixation to, um, to bed. The other problem was that 10 and Rose were so damned smug rather a lot of the time.
I concur with @blenkinsopthebrave when he says that SM has been a whole lot more successful in handling the dynamic of Doctor/companion attraction/sexuality. Giving him a long-term and equal love interest in River Song was a genius move, and to an extent Missy has fulfilled a slightly similar, if more dysfunctional, role for 12. For my money, Amy and Rory are my favourite companions and I think work because of the slight air of sexual tension/insecurity that exists between the two of them and the Doctor.
Also agree that if Bill does not return next year (but I’d lay odds that she will) then it will be interesting just how CC will deal with this now ever-present dynamic. It is the aspect of the modern Who showrunner that possibly requires the most ingenuity I think.
9 July 2017 at 20:24 #60493@brewski — another nice theory.
I think we could well see Susan at Christmas, given PC’s keenness for her to come back and the rumours that he is getting a strong input into the special. Now I know many are keen to see some kind of return to the character, but I’ve never been all that bothered myself. I think mostly because of the culture of the time her character wasn’t handled as well as it could have been and while it might be nice to remedy that, I can’t help but feel that the character’s story, as it was portrayed, has kind of run its course.
Having said that, I think @janetteb should definitely write her fanfic (love me a bit of fanfic). I’m sure we could find a home for it on the site if needs be…
8 July 2017 at 20:18 #60478@bluesqueakpip–
Bonkers theory 1: It’s someone with a cast-iron excuse for being on set, such as a present/former companion.
Yep, I could be on board with that. Although I think we could definitely rule out Pearl though, now that the door has clearly been left open for her return. Maybe, just maybe, Michelle Gomez might still be in the running though.
Bonkers theory 2: It’s David Bradley (who has worked with Chris Chibnall), possibly for a short run.
Now that would be great. But can’t see the Beeb responding to complaints about Capaldi’s maturity with someone even older. (Although part of me thinks that they should.)
Bonkers theory 3: They’re going to delay filming the new Doctor as long as possible, and simply CGI the new actor’s face onto Peter Capaldi.
Great idea. They’re going to stick a Capaldi wig on the new Doctor and do a deliberate homage to the Baker>McCoy regeneration. Now, that would be daring.
8 July 2017 at 15:59 #60475@wolfweed–
And if it is indeed all in the can — and s11 does not start filming until the new year — then it looks as if they might well get away with a surprise new Doc at Chrimbo….
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