Ok, this is a forum, so this is my view.
LEAVE RTD ALONE

Ive been reading a few posts about how "RTD musta been watching star wars before he wrote that" for once, just have one episode of Doctor Who without bashing RTD.

If it wasn't for him, the highlight of every chrstmas would still be The Queens Speech and Eastenders!!

Just for once, leave him alone, at least until AFTER you have watched both specials.

Thanks

Whoever agrees please say so i realise im not alone on this one!

People are entiled to their opinions, even if their opinions are foolish and mean-spirited. The RTD bashers aren't going to heed your request.

it is a forum that shows a cross section of views and opinions. difficult to say what the finale is like until I have seen it even though I do have reservations based on the clips I have seen so far.

Most of what RTD did has been a rehash of past DW characters and concepts, the idea that "if it wasn't for RTD we would be eating overcooked sprouts over repeats of Morecombe and Wise on xmas day!!" is rather offensive to the real creative people behind Dr Who.

Those people from the original run that is.



It's like teens who like "Family Guy" and think it genius but are unaware what a rip-off most of it is.

Forgot to mention - not only would your request not be heeded, but it would also directly cause MORE RTD bashing.

.......

well, if the last tennent two-parter is ANYWHERE near the storming quality of the stolen earth/journeys end ..... i'll be damn happy!!!

I thought they were pretty awful. However, if it's anywhere near the storming quality of The Waters of Mars ... I'll be damn happy!!!

And, yes, I know the audience appreciation was through the roof for those two and, no, I don't think RTD should be writing just for me.

If it weren't for him, someone else would have bee showruner on DW for the last few years.

Without wishing to stroke RTD's ego too much, I have to say that turning a defunct cult show into a massive mainstream success is as close to genius as you're likely to find in British TV. The revival of Doctor Who could easily have been an embarrassing and expensive flop in less capable hands.

Hear hear!
But to achieve that things had to change, drastically.
With respect to those who worked on the original series, if the revived show had looked and sounded in 2005 anything like it did in 1989, it would have bombed big time, and we would never have seen new Doctor Who on mainstream TV ever again.
The changes in style and presentation were always going to alienate may traditional fans of the show.
I just hope that the next two shows are not like too many of the season finale two-parters. A really good first part followed by a final part that leaves you thinking "oh, was that it?"

Your right to an extent that if it wasn't him, someone else may have got the job....but that doesn't mean 100% that we would have been seeing Doctor Who for the last four years. One can try to compare other shows that have come and gone (Robin Hood, Demons), and say that Doctor Who could have easily gone that way too. Then you could argue that those shows didn't have a strong history behind them like Doctor Who does. Yes the current series has a lot to owe for the classic series, I do not doubt that for a second, but I only came to that conclusion after becoming a fan of Doctor Who thanks to the New incarnation, thanks to inparticular the episode School Reunion. Yes maybe half, maybe more than a half of that 10 million that watched Rose, watched because they wanted to see what the New version of the this national (but mostly forgotton from the mainstream point of view) treasure was like. But quite a lot of people, myself included, and people of my age and the millions of kids who watched it for the first time, classic Who had nothing to do with it. As we hadn't grown up with it, not really....I remember being more interested in Thunderbirds, The Munsters...yet I never really sat down to watch Doctor Who, I can remember vaguly scenes of it, that I may have come across while watching TV, but nothing that I would cry to my parents about to let me watch.
Beginning of 2005 I never dreamed there would ever be a single programme on Christmas that for the next four years of my life I would eagerly anticipate. For me it was a time to ignore TV unless there was a good comedy on...wasn't a big soap fan...so really there was absolutly nothing...

It could have gone horribly wrong when RTD took over too. Instead of carrying on running with the show the moment that CE's Doctor said "Run"..the whole nation could have ignored it...and there wouldn't have been a Christmas special...no other series at all...in fact God knows when the show may have been given another chance again.

Whether people on the internet hate or love RTD's work...the fact is he made it successful enough for there to be an opportunity for another head writer to take the show on with pride...and maybe he can give you (and I don't mean "you" as in you Histeria, I mean in you in generic terms, as are the following "you"'s) what your looking for. And despite that, there is still no 100% garuntee that Moff will be able to continue this success...but RTD has left on a high note...and for that alone, whether you like his stories or not, you can be thankful that he hasn't destroyed the franchise, and it has an opportunity to come under another head writer who can give it his own stamp and therefore carry on the tradition from the moment the first producers and writers and actors left the classic series and handed to the new.


And I think its worthwile reading this interview of RTD's which shows that even the man himself in 2005, wasn't 100% certain that the show was going to be huge as it was, and he too didn't know that Doctor Who was to become a traditional Christmas event.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/s...octor-Who.html

I say Hats off to RTD...he may have had the Time of his life making it with the passion he does, and the love he has for the show, including the classic series....but he helped create another generation of Who fans with his vision of the show.


In terms of the thread, in the end, a person can like or dislike something. But it can be done without any attacks on the writers themselves. After all one's gold is another's sh*t. No point throwing names at the writers.

Or one that started out promising and burned out in three years like Robin Hood.

Doctor Who was not merely a success, it was a smashing success.

Hooray for RTD!

In any case, in two weeks time, the RTD bashing ends and the Moffat bashing begins.

Doubtful, the JNT bashing continues to this day

I was just thinking that - a new producer just adds a new target. And the Moff-bashing pretty much started when Matt Smith was cast.

This is a great post, crazzyaz. It does seem odd to me that people that are less keen on RTD's writing style seem convinced that pretty much anyone taking over the show would have engineered a relaunch that was as successful as RTD, which really is patently nonsense of the highest order. The degree of risk taken was huge, and that it paid off is almost entirely down to RTD - his stories, his casting, his production style, his vision. Who knows how things had gone with a mysterious other person overseeing it. Might have worked, might have bombed. And as RTD says in that interview you posted, had it bombed I doubt very much we would ever have seen it back on our screens again.

Of course you can't please all of the people all of the time. There are people who don't care for RTD's writing style. Fair enough. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be able to appreciate that RTD work on the show overall has been a great success and praise that accordingly. Now it is passed in to someone else's hands perhaps it might appeal to them more, though at the same time it will almost inevitably appeal to some people less. That is the nature of these things.

RTD's legacy to this show is enormous, very few people connected with the show have done more for it, and it's a shame a small number of people cannot bring themselves to acknowledge this.

Now in relation to this OP, I really don't get the point of it. You can't tell people not to criticise someone on a message board whose primary function is to foster debate. People are entitled to make criticisms of people so long as they do so in a way that doesn't breech the t&c of the board. Also, starting a thread like this only attracts people that don't like RTD to come in here and attack him because they have been told not to!

Right, but JNT serials do tend to be rubbish. Conversely, RTD deserves the praise lauded on him above by crazzyaz7, Muttley76 and others. You just wouldn't know it if you viewed certain of his episodes in isolation.

Just this! RTD promises so much and then you think 'oh'. The universe (or just the Earth) has been saved from mega-catastrophe again and no matter how much suffering and devastation there's been it's all back to normal.
I wasn't alienated by the new series from the start, I thought Chris Eccleston's Doctor was phenomenal but I do have reservations now about the emphasis which seems to have shifted and there's no certainly about anything, and now the whole 'last of the Time Lords' thing that changed the Ninth Doctor so much may be a red herring of a kind. Okay so we don't know that yet, but there used to be some consistancy and when previous Doctors regularly saved the Earth (or the universe) they usually did it in a much more understated way and not many people knew about it.

i actually find this rather an oversimplification actually. Some people say everything was back to normal after LOTTL, but it wasn't in every way that mattered. Jack and Martha's views on travelling with The Doctor were forever changed. The Doctor was ripped apart by what happened and was another step down the 'time lord victorious' path. The Master will return more mentally unbalanced than ever, Lucy has been destroyed. The point is that the central characters had no re set. Therefore, from the perspective of the audience the events are NOT undone in the least. And do you honestly think everything was 'back to normal' at the end of Journys End? Really?

I feel that RTD is going at the right time. An objective summary of his Dr Who scripts for me would be:-

Character Development:- 10/10

Plot Ideas:- 7/10

Plot Build Up:- 8/10

Plot Resolution:- 3/10

Twists:- 6/10

Challenging the actors:- 9/10

so I make it 45/60... so he's three quarters good in my book. I just wish he would have done season finalés with a co writer because his ideas run dry at tmes...

RTD bashers (one of which is myself at times also) are all grateful he brought the show back no matter what comments we make...

this is actually quite an intertesting idea, might be worth a thread even after we have seen the last of the RTD era...

But for now I would say:

Character Development:- 8.5/10

Plot Ideas:- 8/10

Plot Build Up:- 9/10

Plot Resolution:- 6.5/10

Twists:- 9/10

Challenging the actors:- 9/10

I've found the way RTD builds up a plot and incorporates twists two of his biggest strengths. Generally, I agree he develops characters brilliantly, but there have been a few exceptions, hence the 8.5 rather than 10 you gave them.

I do agree plot resolution is his weak spot, but not to the extent you suggest. I think also part of the problem is that there is always so much speculation amongst us fans about how it will be resolved that the actual ending is quite often a let down for some. So partly it's self inflicted and possibly why the wider audience enjoy the resolutions more than we can at times!

Nothing gets 10/10 for me because nothing is ever going to be perfect over the course of four and bit series.

Anyway, overall I think I make that 50/60.

ps I think at some point everyone has been a RTD 'basher' at some point, again because no one is perfect and their is always going to be something that rubs even the biggest RTD fan up the wrong way!

Yea on reflection your scores and reasoning is better than mine

Previous Doctors did it on a show with no budget for special effects or crowds of extras - and at a time when even a large TV or movie budget wasn't up to the job. They didn't tell "big" stories because they couldn't.

By definition, your summary is purely subjective and not objective at all. That doesn't make it bad or good, wrong or right, just what it is - your personal, subjective opinion and no one else's. An objective summary is not possible.