I was a little underwhelmed by the second episode, but the show (i knows it's only 2 in) is showing a massive improvement on the end of RTD's era which i think had naturally come to its conclusion, i was upset when tennant went, but apart from Waters of Mars, the last few episodes we nothing more than fluff where overblown spectacle replaced credible story.

I think people seem to forget that the show is more important than the actor, and the show will survive with Tennant, much as it did when Baker went and well after Smith's stint as well.

I for one think Moffat has done what was needed, a complete refreshing change to the show and i will judge fully when the series has ended, but on the strength of it so far i am liking what i am seeing.

The inherent nature of the show is change..... which is why the show thrives and survives to this day.

can't we discuss what Moffat is up to, e.g. Crack in the Universe and Silence will Fall. 2 episodes so far with specific frames of a crack in the universe.

What about the Doctor's quote at the end of "Attack" about never having been more wrong about someone, or words to that effect. As to the *underdeveloped* idea of duplicates, this reinforces my point.

I can't believe their knack for absoloutist statements after a ridiculously short time. Matt Smith is already being called terrible by some after just two episodes!!! Stephen Moffat's reign has been called 'disappointing', geez give it some time.

I don't understand why fans get so flabbergasted that some episodes in a series are weaker or 'filler' episodes.....If they take off their rose tinted view of the classic series there were plenty of weak, forgettable filler stories in old Who.....just as there were in Star Trek, The Prisoner, Battlestar Galactica and other hit Sci fi shows.

The team behind Doctor Who get a lot more right than they do wrong and on a pretty modest budget. I think people need to stop being so petty. Not that the BBC listen to Who fans anyway, they have cried wolf so much that now their complaints carry no weight.

But only 13 episodes have been made in 9 months. No need for filler episodes. Have you seen the number of people who work on the show? Hardly a small budget. Surely they can get basics like an internally consistent script right.

They're are just as many fans who don't like Tennant as they're are Smith. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, the problem is that it's dominanting the forum.
Everyone should stop being so sensitive. Criticism of the opening eps should be acceptable and should not be derided as are those who love the opening eps. Give it chance we haven't even set off yet.

They did. And since the latest episode seems to have gotten an audience AI of 86 and been the most watched programme of the day, it seems the majority had no problem with it at all.

There is. Often for the big extravagant episodes (like finales) the show needs to be curtailed by having modest low level filler episodes to free up the budget, as a counterweight. RTD used this all the time. The reason episodes like Love and Monsters and The Idiot's lantern exist.

In fact Charlie Brooker talked about it (about 40 seconds in)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUOvZHNSW30

The actual questions should be:

Why is it important to find a pattern?

Why is it that you would think there was pattern?

Why is that when you criticised anything RTD did it was geniune criticism, for example you not being able to forgive what he did to Doctor Who, whatever that was, but yet if others do the same in regards to Moff then there must be an agenda....why?

The only answer that comes to my mind is this saying by William M. Thackeray "The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face."

Sums this thread up I'd say!



Patronising much??? And that goes for all the posters who have said that too!

This leads to two things again. That if the Beast Below has become an example of how intelligent the work of Moff is for us low common thinkers....because Moff qwrites intelligent work leaves only two option when looking at the reception of his previous work. Either the likes of Blink, GITF, TDD, TEC, SITL, FOTD and TEH were the actual dumb down scripts....because they didn't have that many people say it was too confusing or boring, and certainly didn't have the amount of people voting less than very good and average as TBB has....in fact it's the first Moff script to have an almost close differences between the Very Good, Good and Average results. Or TBB is the low brainless stuff compared to what has gone before....

It can only be one or the other if we went on the idea that Moff's script is too intelligent for some people.

If I were to give my opinion, I'd say after TEC and TDD, TBB is definitely Moff's best. But I wouldn't call it really that of a clever and intelligent script, I am not a big fan of the other ones, and yet I am happy to admit that they are truly very clever, and tightly plotted compared to this. For me TBB is very much in style of RTD's work...the thoughful side of it, the plot being about the characters, and not about getting from A to B or some celever little mystery to be solved. I could also argue that the likes of Love and Monsters Boom Town and Midnight are very thougt-provoking stories that don't hand answers on the plate and explain every little detail (which funnily enough Blink, TGITF and the Libraray story do, even if they don't really mean anything in the end ie timey wimey)...in fact RTD doesn't like to explian every detail, he feels the viewers don't need everything being told, for example the whole timey wimey thing was used by RTD in New Earth in terms of Cassandra, but the explianation wasn't rammed down our throats, as it wasin a way (even if in a fun way) in Blink. So technically I could argue they are the intelligent plots that go over the head of many. But no....the answer is simple, it boils down to the individual on whether they liked what they saw or they didn't....they wanted more exaplination or they didn't. Nothing to do with "some people" not being able to handle Moff's Scripts, again unless you want to argue that Blink is actually well known for pleasing the masses because it is dumbed down?

I can see why people would be confused by some of the things that were in TBB, for example, no matter what sopme people say the Smilers were underused, and not the purpose that they were being made out to at the beginning of the story...reall menacing law enforces, who seemed to have a life of their own, for example producing three types of faces. Really they were put there for one reason only, to scare the children with the faces....That child at the beginnning could have easily ended up "below" without the need of the smiler there, he went into the lift, he broke the law....and on top of that the whale didn't eat children, but if they were doing it to create a fear, then why have a forget button on the overflow pipe? If in the end all the children did was carry on working in the Tower?The smiler and the littel girl's poem were nothing but an atmosphere creator, as I have got used to this type of stuff in Moff's stories...it doesn't spoil the enjoyment of the over all story. And some of the so called dates and stuff that people are feeling lost on, is because Matt spoke really fast, it was something that I caught on my repeat vieweing with subtitles. And the other scene with Amy and the recording, the confusion comes about, not because of the writing, but of the way they tried to "cleverly" shoot it....again it was about creating mystery...but really leaving some people confused, because they way Amy turned off that recording was as if she remebered why she had recorded it, becaus ethere was nothing in the recording that said Amy must not show this to the Doctor? If anything the moment she forgot, and the recording started playing, she would have been so bemused by it, that as the Doctor enterd, she would want him to see it, after all she told everything else ie she has no idea why she pressed the forget button. So there were lots of plot holes, and cofusing styles....

I still loved it though....and anyone who didn't are entitled to not like it for what ever reason....there doesn't need to be an agenda, only because some non-fans of RTD did



I love Love and Monsters...and pretty much like Fear Her...the Latter loses out from being very brilliant for me due to it's execution and not very good supporting cast.

But I thought someone on here posted that AI and ratings were no guarantee of a programmes quality, or does that only apply if you don't like the show in question?

Because that is how it goes....just as it is when if RTD does a thoughtful peice of drama in Doctor Who that questions Human Nature, Doctor Who shouldn't be like that, but about Spaceships and creepy monsters, but if Moff does it then it's an intelligent peice of television and how Doctor Who should always be like, but which the likes of us unintelligent folks will never get!

They're no guarantee of it, no. Luckily, in this case the quality was there. Obviously, a large chunk of the audience will respond positively to decent writing if they're given it.

Who is to say that everytime the audience has given a story that you don't like high AI (and Midnight got 86 too, you know the story which you rather was about spaceships and creepy monsters) are not responding positivily to decent writing?

Er, how does a show being the top rated of the day mean that they got the script right? You are conveniently ignoring all the postings on "The Beast Below" which point out all its inconsistencies. Fine if you want to ignore them, but don't insult our intelligence by saying that the script made complete sense.

Not at all. Some episodes may have less money spent on them than others, but each individual episode still has a hell of a lot of money spent on it and there is absolutely no excuse not to get the basics right.

And they'll also respond positively to what, in your opinion, is poor writing, given RTD's AI ratings for all of his episodes, so that proves absolutely nothing.....

But it did make complete sense, to me and to a lot of other people. If you didn't understand it, that's your problem, not the writer's. I still can't see any inconsistencies.

Now if I had said that to you in regards to any RTD story...that it was your problem that you didn't understand, say TEOT (which I know you have said to) and not RTD's...what would you say?

People really didn't like The Beast Below? Really? I think it's one my favourite episodes actually.
You can't really judge much yet, RTD did 4 and a bit series and SM has done 2 episodes. Hold your horses people!
Last edited by Dizx : 12-04-2010 at 17:19

No, it is the writer's problem as he hasn't managed to convey his ideas clearly. I still don't believe it made complete sense to you on first viewing, but I guess I'll have to accept you've superior intelligence to a lot of the rest of us on here.

That's not why people hated that episode...

I did understand TEOT. I just thought it was badly plotted and ridiculous. The basic ideas were finme, but the plot feell apart completely because the writer was more concerned with spectacle and sentiment than with logic. That wasn't the case, here. All the alleged inconsistencies in TBB have been explained a dozen times over the last two days by several people, but those who were 'confused' by it seem to be simply stubbornly failing to understand them.

Actually he did four series' and a bit

But I agree we shouldn't be comparing them yet....and even after five years...its all done to subjctiveness...the only thing that will determine the success of the show on the outside is ratings, becuase as long as it gets good ratings it has more chance of staying alive.






Which is why Adam siad that Blink disproves that theory

It made complete sense to me. If you can't believe that, that's up to you, but please don't accuse me of lying. If you couldn't understand it, fine. I can't understand that, frankly. But quite a lot of other people on here seem to have been able to make perfect sense off it, too.

You meant to say "some" people. As you will have read, others disagree.