Options
Why I think Who doesn't feel like Who...
Tiernan_Mccarth
Posts: 218 Forum Member
✭
... or at least for me.
To me Doctor Who has always been a cheap sci fi show, and since Moffat has taken over it seems to be trying to hard to be a Hollywood blockbuster. The swooping Camera angles, the lighting effects and the editing seem to shout ''Look we have money!''. Since series 5 onwards the budget has increased and I believe with that the writing has become Lazy. Take Turn Left and Midnight as examples. They were two of the cheapest episodes of New Who and yet they are two of the best. It's exactly the same with Blink. A cheap episode with statues as the villains and yet its so compelling and fantastic. Tonight's episode seemed like a new low. Visually we had one of the best looking monsters in a while and it seemed almost wasted with what I would deem as naff. So much more time appeared to be wasted on several thousand different camera angles that the script began to crumble.
Another point is that the monsters aren't actually monsters. They are either under the control of another villain or they are actually misunderstood. I'd have preferred the monsters of the past few episodes to actually be the schemers and villains rather than misunderstood creatures trapped under human control.
Your thoughts?
To me Doctor Who has always been a cheap sci fi show, and since Moffat has taken over it seems to be trying to hard to be a Hollywood blockbuster. The swooping Camera angles, the lighting effects and the editing seem to shout ''Look we have money!''. Since series 5 onwards the budget has increased and I believe with that the writing has become Lazy. Take Turn Left and Midnight as examples. They were two of the cheapest episodes of New Who and yet they are two of the best. It's exactly the same with Blink. A cheap episode with statues as the villains and yet its so compelling and fantastic. Tonight's episode seemed like a new low. Visually we had one of the best looking monsters in a while and it seemed almost wasted with what I would deem as naff. So much more time appeared to be wasted on several thousand different camera angles that the script began to crumble.
Another point is that the monsters aren't actually monsters. They are either under the control of another villain or they are actually misunderstood. I'd have preferred the monsters of the past few episodes to actually be the schemers and villains rather than misunderstood creatures trapped under human control.
Your thoughts?
0
Comments
People sometimes complain that Russell's era looked too much like a Soap Opera, but that was one of it's strengths to me. It evoked more of a down to earth environment. Our brains make connections like that with the cinematography. I get a similar sensation when I watch Classic who.
Not that I think the more cinematic look is a bad direction for Doctor Who to go in, but I get your frustration.
One time I was listening to the commentary for Red Dwarf: Back to Earth, and they were talking about how great the lighting and camera angles are now in comparison to the old cheap looking episodes, but that was never what people actually loved about the show.
It's one of the most realistic things about a peculiar show about an alien travelling through time and space: the things that look big and scary might well be good inside, and the people that look nice and normal might be hiding a secret bad side or even anything else underneath.
It's a great lesson in never judging a book by its cover, or teaching people to refrain from judgement at all, at least until the full facts of any given situation.
It brings a depth to the show that was lacking in the original series, which was just "thing looks evil, is evil, kill it and everything is ok again"
World has moved on......
What I'm not really liking so much atm is that The Doctor doesn't feel like The Doctor.
Peter Capaldi is a fantastic actor, no question, but atm it just feels like Peter Capaldi doing good acting. Nothing especially alien, eccentric or interesting about him.
His only defining trait of this incarnation is that sometimes he's a bit of a ruthless ****, for want of a better word, none of the "Fun" of the previous Doctors, and The Doctor should be fun to be around more than anything.
Also - the teller was definitely NOT a "monster".
most was okay, but the dodgy computerised lanscape background when they were dropping of the two teller creatures looked bad.
The problem is the "aura" of a nice family show has gone. What it is now is still a perfectly valid and entertaining programme, but it's definitely more NBC than BBC. And that's not what people were previously getting in rebooted Dr Who.
Also The Doctor is not the Doctor as he has been in all previous incarnations, the companion is no longer the voice of the viewers as she(he) always was, the episodes are clever but not very real emotionally... It's a different show. Possibly the BBC have pushed this change.
If it had started like this in 2005 it would not have got a 2nd series.
I actually liked the fact that they had those stunning graphics for the "customer area" of the bank -the massive halls with walls tens of feet high and marble everywhere - but as soon as you got "behind the scenes" the bank was shown as "industrial" - just a great big money factory.
One part that did give me quick double take was the corridors with the sloping buttresses - reminded me of the old Dalek sets which always seemed to have that shape/
Too often the RTD era had the visual aesthetic of a daytime soap opera/drama. Its not that it looked low budget. Low budgets can inspire great work. It just looked often lazy and perfunctory. Of course this doesn't change the quality of the stories (I don't agree that they are worse now than in the RTD era...many will disagree) but it certainly improves the viewing experience for those like me who value interesting direction and visuals.
And it isn't really like some bloated Hollywood blockbuster. Look how sparingly they used any effects in 'Listen'. It was probably a very cheap episode relatively speaking. But what we had was a director who wanted to put his own stamp on the episode and actually use and enjoy the tools available to him. As opposed to the RTD era where I feel they employed capable but merely functional directors etc who seemed happy to just point a camera at something and shoot it.
Alot of early New Who has dated worse than some Classic Who. That's just how it is. But if you disliked tonight episode I would blame the writing. Not the stylistic choices of the director. Its about time the show took some risks. Witness the beautiful scene in Into the Dalek where they first enter the eye stalk. Brilliant stuff.
There seemed to be large jumps where stuff had been cut too. Like where the Doctor encounters the Teller in the vault, and then cut to the security office. If the Teller souped the other two on sight why'd it escort him and Clara back up there?
And then between the security office and where they were running through the pipes again. How did they get back there, did they detonate the bomb again? Or was there a short cut from the managers office?
I know these are mostly little stupid niggles but it makes the episode feel rushed, and incomplete.
Who has always been a lot more than White hat v Black hat, big reason why I love it. Thank gawd the Doctor is, and continues to be, a flawed and fascinating character.
Not bringing my own opinion into it about which I prefer, i'd say if someone looked at Classic who and new who without judging on effects or without any nostalgia, just judging the stories and acting, having never seen any of it before, I think they would conclude that they are about equal in terms of quality because they are really, whichever one you personally prefer.
I can cover some of that - I hope.
The augment and the mutant were slightly sketchy but I believe they were as much "metaphor" as vital characters. The mutant's role was to feed the "I hate the Architect" line - to act as the spark that let the Doctor identify himself as the Architect. (beyond that, her role in the heist itself was limited and slightly contrived). The augment seemed to be another reference to unusual memories in relation to Clara who seems to be struggling as a result of having some impossible "memories" from the "clones" times in the Doctor's timestream. His ability to remove memories at will and his explaining the sense of loss that may go with that may be something that is coming up for Clara if we get anther "Bad Wolf/Doctor Donna" style scene with the compaion going to die cos of "stuff in her head".
That thing of having characters that only marginally feed the episode but who provide analogies for the arc or main characters' stories is not new - it's pretty much stock stuff for DW since 2005 - at least.
Regarding the Teller not feasting on the Doctor and Clara - it didn't do that to the first guy until it was specifically ordered to. Unlike that first man, there was no question that the Doctor and Clara were guilty - so there was no need tro have their minds probed and Delphox just decided to have them disposed of. Their "crime" did not involve "deception" in the same way as the businessman so there was no benefit in showing that they'd been caught just thinking of ripping-off the bank.
The easily accessed pipes was hilarious - almost to the point of being a pastiche.
Not sure what you're saying about the pipes/office thing? If you're referring to the four of them (after discovering the other two weren't dead) got back to the private vault, there was a way down and the augment told them how to get there - cos he'd got a full plan of the bank stored in his memory.
To misquote Mr Billy Joel, It's all Doctor Who to me.
Didn't all BBC Drama shows including DW get budget cuts and not increases around that time?
The budget was cut in series 5 and there were lots of stories about how much trouble they had staying within the new budget to corroborate that. The budget cut was widely known and discussed at the time. Remember when series 5 aired, we'd just got a new Conservative/Coalition government, off the back of a global financial meltdown. The BBC were under immense pressure to keep costs down.
So your overall belief that a higher budget would result in less creative effort is immediately undermined by the fact that the budget not only did not increase, but actually the opposite was true.
Let's be honest, you can't claim the RTD era looked cheaper than the Moffat era. They had some absolutely massive stories - and the FX shots to match - during RTDs run. I don't even feel a need to state which episodes or scenes in particular. If you've watched the show, you'd obviously already know it all.
The show (at least from 2005) has always had a mix of expensive episodes and cheap ones. Its also always had a mix of quality episodes and not so great ones. There's also always been a solid mix of opinions on what constitutes a good episode and a bad one. It has more mix than a pick 'n' mix!
Bad writing.
And I think you might be using the word metaphor wrong (although, with a degree in English Linguistics, and Masters in Literature, I may have over specialised my mean a little). But it's generally when you say one concept is another. All the world is a stage. If they are a tenor then what vehicle are they driving? I don't think they had the depth to represent anything. Am totally missing something there.
Okay. If they weren't going to get souped, why did the Doctor say they were? And more to the point, why did he give them the transporter, thinking it was a death sentence, if they were merely going to be detained?
That explanation creates more questions, and flaws. Bad Writing.
You can't excuse lazy writing.
I do agree with some of what you say, but just remember. Classic Who was immensely popular at some stages of its life. Even though we hear stories of cardboard sets, it did actually have good budgets from time to time. What may look cheap and tacky to us nowadays (like stockings over people's heads with mouths and eyes drawn on for example) was actually considered very scary at the time and hugely popular. I personally hate the original Mondasian story with Troughton, and thought he was so poor at times in those episodes. I see the story line there similarly disappointing as Time Heist, just my opinion.
I don't quite get the angle you're pitching here, as if the RTD era deliberately chose to be like that-it didn't
Back then, bringing Who back was a massive gamble and the entire franchise was a bit of a laughing stock due to the reputation of the worst parts of the original series lingering on in the publics conciousness (you could argue in the 90s Doctor Who was more famous for its negative points, wobbly sets, terrible acting etc, and its highs were further enough in the past to be a forgotten memory)
You simply weren't going to get big name directors taking a punt on this thing coming off and being a success.
I imagine the directors in the first couple of seasons were assigned to the show in the same way an army soldier is given his orders-they're a BBC employee and they're assigned a show. They do what they're told.
Now the show these days is a visual treat-I grant you that. Far superior, eye candy wise, to anything that was done in the RTD era.
Taking aside our biased fanboy views for a second, to the mainstream world the show is a smash hit, its going from strength to strength able to attract big name actors not only to its lead role but as guest stars/villains in almost every episode these days.
The same with writers, the same also with directors.
To blame the RTD era for somewhat pedestrian directing is to criticise the foundations of a building while you simultaneously marvel at its beautiful spire or other architectural wonder that sits atop of that foundation.
RTD started the process in the 00's, that Moffat has continued in the 2010s.
The general move of television to be something "worthy" enough to attract big name stars away from movies and into series has helped too, but make no mistake, we are all benefitting now from the work the RTD era started and the Moffat era continued.
Whatever you think of the quality of their scrips as writers, as showrunners they've both done an almost perfect job and the show wouldn't be as visually, aurally or structurally amazing as it is now without their hard work away from their writing desks.
(it's one of the reasons why, when his serious and very personal matters are dealt with to hopefully a positive outcome, I really hope RTD will return to the fold to at least occasionally bathe in the waters he worked so hard to plumb in for us. Stranger things have happened, eh?
Doctor Who will either stagnate or it will progress, or possibly even regress, but crucially it will change. Not changing is the worst possible thing it can do. That will eventually kill the show. I think there is an essential spirit that unites most of Doctor Who that has been remarkably well kept over the years, and which is probably why the show persists. As long as that (very broad; ie. Doctor Who is a family show, mixing science fantasy, drama and humour) spirit is kept then the show has a very broad scope and it absolutely behooves the producers to explore as much of that as possible, in my opinion.
Some people hated the supposed 'soap opera' tone in the RTD era. Some people hate the supposed 'fairytale' tone of the Matt Smith era. Some people imagine that the 'classic' series was one certain way (it wasn't) and that the modern show goes against that. The crucial part of all those sentences is the phrase 'some people'. And all of those people tend to regard the other perspectives as being somewhat phillistine. The fact that there can be any such schizm between these different notions is what proves all of those notions to be wrong. The show is different things to different people and the moment they try and set it in stone is when it becomes utterly banal.
Let's not try and pigeonhole the show. It really is detrimental.
Would you prefer The Doctor be omnipotent?