Agree with this post x fnarg

To be fair to RTD, I bet SM writes all the opening and finale episodes while he is the show runner.

This is standard practice for most TV series especially American Series. Especially for those series that are created by a particular individual or is very strongly identified with the show runner. Like Buffy/Angel or Heroes.

Oh, yes. All that terrible damage.

Like successfully reviving DW and making it a huge mainstream hit.

Like making it indispensible to the BBC - unthinkable given what happened to it in the twilight of the late 80s.

Like engaging with mass audiences of all ages - in particular children.

Like turning the show into a ratings juggernaut that has demolished about 99% of the competition ITV has played against it.

Really dreadful damage ...



Sorry to burst your bubble, but just because what he did wasn't to your taste doesn't mean qualify it as 'damage'.

And only RTD was offered the gig: the others vying for a chance to do so were all declined.

I watched it again yesterday and there was only one space ship visible from Earth, and that was over Ledworth because the Atraxi knew Prisoner Zero was there. The other spaceships were in space orbiting Earth.

Even though the whole planet received the 'Prisoner Zero...' message via TV, radio etc, they would not have know it was down to an alien invasion nor would they have known the rest of the planet was experiencing the same. They would have seen the change in the sun, but again not know the reason for it. Even the stock footage of Wall Street and Times Square shows people just getting on with their lives. The '0' is on the clock screen in Time's Square but people ignore it. Now if they knew the Earth was being invaded, would they carry on with their normal lives? If Moffat had intended for the planet to know there would have been scenes of crowds in New York reacting, but instead they used footage of people just living normal lives unaffected by the Atraxi.

All of your 4 points are essentially the same - that he got good ratings.

Making something populist could be construed as damaging of course but RTD damaged the show in terms of coming up with such ludicrous armageddon style stories that he backed the show into several corners.

Thankfully now Moffat has an ingenious way of reversing this damage.

The show constantly backs itself into corners for the sake of delivering stories that are worth watching, this is nothing new and will never change - it also delivers cliffhangers in which the Doctor could die in spite of the fact we know he never will.

What Doctor Who is in most danger from is that small pocket of so-called fans who feel it necessary to use the programme as a vehicle for other, quite unpleasant attitudes by couching them in fanspeak: not only does this behaviour directly contravene the very essense of what Doctor Who is about, it leaves other non-partisan viewers feeling that there is something quite sinister going on.

SM has taken over the mantle of Executive Producer and Lead Writer from his friend RTD and has a very clear vision of how he wishes to proceed: he neither courts nor, I suspect, approves of the zealous support of those who would use his tenure as nothing more than a stick to beat his predecessor with week in week out.

Not really...we only saw one ship in Leadworth...and even then that didn't cause mass panic with the residents, so who is to say it should have done the same anywhere else? The ships were zooming in and keeping an eye on everyone, no pun intended....and Most of the World that was recieveing the sunlight would be a little worried wouldn't they?

Even in RTD's end of the world stuff....we never saw mass panic across the world...just London mostly, and news reports.....but it was hard to get news reports here because all the TV channels had the message on it....if it hadn't that is how we would have known about other space ships zooming in. In JE, we saw Dalek Saucers across the world, because the characters were spread across the world, if the likes of Martha had not been in New York...we wouldn't have been shown the Dalek Saucers attacking the city....and even then we weren't shown the reactions of the people in the city.....jsut London....

A quite excellent post

Why do you think its odd? That's how humans are - they all see things differently.

Its like with the new Star Trek movie, some think JJ Abrams is a genius for basically erasing 40 years of Trek history - I on the other hand think he is a moron for doing it.

True humans see things differently....but there is enough proof that if RTD had written that story or even that arc....those very people would be moaning about it that are now praising Moff for doing so....you only have to read their inconsistant posts to know....

I think he's referring to the fact that if RTD had written this reset in to the show, the same people (ie: poppy) claiming that it's a genius move on Moffat's part would have been loudly decrying the use of it as a deus ex machina.

The denotes the irony of the sentence: I don't think it's odd and you just agreed with me

Apart from I thought JJ Abrams rebirth of ST was genius (if only as a way of continuing a series that is very close to losing all its original cast: it doesn't have the DW element for its lead...possibly the greatest example of "genius" in storylining ever.)

You are wrong

As I said, the planet would be aware of the effect on the sun, but not know the cause of it.

You make great points, and I think at the end of the day its up to each viewer to interpret it as they see fit. I didn't get the sense of global awareness of the Atraxi, but others do. With the RTD invasions there was always a sense of impending doom on a global scale. For example, we see London homes being invaded in Doomsday, but are told it is happening across the world. I don't get that sense from The Eleventh Hour at all because we are not told there are ships over other cities.

Either way, as I said in a previous post, it was the first episode and Moffat clearly didn't change the format dramatically from the start, his re-set is a slow burner.

The direction this series has now taken seems to be smaller scale, not that we have seen any further present day Earth threats. Who knows, perhaps the series will have epic Earth invasions. However, Moffat said himself in DWC it got boring, especially with London at the centre of everything.

And with the 'crack' and history being unwritten it does seem he wants to remove human knowledge of aliens to some degree. Perhaps not all of them will be removed from history, the only implications so far are the events of The Next Doctor and the series 4 finale (which is undoubtedly the biggest).

And I would disagree with that sentiment. The 'reset' mechanism, if that's what it is, has been clearly portended, kept its mystery, and not been deployed yet. It's a plot generator, not a convenient means of wrapping up a plot that has gone further than it should have. It would work without feeling like it had been pulled out of nowhere.

And remember it's not just a case of RTD's continuity. It's potentially a method of putting all of time into flux, removing the arguments about retaining continuity right back to the Sixties.

Personally, I don't think it'll go nearly that far.

That is because here the Doctor had twenty minutes exact...while we were never really given a time scale for any of the events except Last of the Time Lords....so there was always a sense of not knowing exactly the point of all doom will strike. And therefore RTD played on that, successully or not...that is subjective



However what is interesting to note is that most of the the global threat was no smaller than the opening stories of the RTD era....for example, Rose, we had Dummies coming alive, but only the London threat was shown, in New Earth...wee that was on a different planet, and the danger was secured in the hospital, in Smith and Jones, it was mainly a hospital, untill towards the end when MRS machine was going to blow up half of the Earth, but the world was none the wiser, and Partners in Crime, again the danger was in London only....


So by those measurements.....TEH had a much more bigger scale.....who knows what we will get in the finale....when Time itself seems to be acting like the big bad....

True, he has said that...so all he really has done is take it out London being the cntre of it all....


But he has alos said that you can't seel the fianle as "smaller and more intimate" than ever....


Plus we all seem to be comparing an opening story with RTD's finales....we have yet to see what Moff does..

And that's what makes this series so interesting. I wonder if it will be something the Doctor can stop happening, or if it will continue in a way that whenever a future story conflicts with previously established events we can just put it down to the crack.

As I've said before, DW has taken me down some seriously bizarre journeys over the last 40 years so one more won't make the slightest difference to me: no matter how big the reset (if indeed there is one) I still own the DVD'S so I can "reset" time back again whenever I feel like it.

Sadly, there are so-called fans here that seem to think that this story arc will actually erase all the things they personally have not liked in Doctor Who which by anyone's reckoning has to be a ridiculous notion.

So long as whatever is to come does not overshadow the individual episodes (as last night's FaS came perilously close to doing in my opinion) then whatever will be will be: filming has finished, no going back now (so to speak)

For me it was intersting up untill Flesh and Stone....when the Angels and the whole story really seemed to be becoming more about the arc than a self contained story. For example I felt that in the end the defeating of the Angles wasn't about defeating the angels....but about closing the arc, which wasn't part of the main story developed in the fantastic Time of Angels....so I do hope that the future stories don't become a sub plot to the main arc...but that is just me..

Yes it would be ridiculous to think it will erase things we don't like. Whatever is erased in story terms, the things that happened still happened in the programme and can still be seen. Not to mention that those things still happened for the Doctor and every other person who travelled in the Tardis. They won't forget them, so they are still significant.

Personally I don't want things removed because I didn't like them, because I have enjoyed the big Earth invasions. However, I do like the notion that not as many human beings are aware of them. I say that because I feel the whole planet knowing about aliens kills the magic of being a companion, one of a special few that experience such things. Anyway, we don't know yet how many invasions will be removed from history. But I'd be very happy to not see as many in future DW.

For all we know Moffat might be removing big invasions from history, so he can just do it all again.

It's not so much about one aspect being more important than the other, but about how it changed from one to another. I don't think the show could have sustained a full two episodes of being stalked by the angels, but combine it with a threat that the angels themselves are scared of, as well as teasing future stories, and you have something more special.

I agree....but for me the change was too jarring and obvious....the Angles become less of a threat, because even they were running away, and the whole first part was shown to be building up to a point of how the Doctor and co will stop this threat....but in the end....he did nothing, the Angels themselves became the downfall for draining the power....it was just lucky that the crack was following Amy, if it hadn't then they didn't have no plan at all to get rid of the angels....but the way it was played out, was that threat of the crack was bigger, as the Doctor tells Amy, if the angel gets her she will just die, but if the crack gets her then she will sieze to exist, so the angels became a usueful fodder to stop the crack from consuming Doctor and co.....

Like I said it didn't work for me...but it did for iothers so that is great!

But you can see the ceiling of the Cisteen Chapel in photographs or on TV and know it exists but that in no way prepares you for the wonder of actually standing there and looking up at it in person.