This thread should be merged with countless others - this is a forum to discuss Doctor Who not for grinding personal axes ad infinitum. For the record, this is a public forum and therefore it is not possible to "gatecrash" threads - some people may simply enjoy the sight of their own posts but when the same opinions/phrases/personal attacks and even posts come round over and over again the thread ceases to be "legitimate" but more a vehicle of over-weaning egos.

In all fairness John that was not what the thread was about, and it wasn't what was being discussed in terms of "my Exec Producer is better than your Exec Producer" until it became too much for some to see a previous writer receiving a bit of praise, so of course they had to intervene.

If you read the first page it is, imho, a very interesting thread, with no RTD vs SM bashing just Who fans discussing how they think the Showrunners/Headwriters have influenced the scripts. In the case of RTD we now know a lot about his input into others writers scripts we however do not know the amount of input SM is having on the scripts for this series, I would have a safe bet that it will be about the same as RTD tenure.

As I say, unfortunately it was to much for some to have a discussion about RTD where he wasn't being chastised.

I love fights, contrivesality and drama , well its a lot more interesting than the hung parilment news and the rubbish election and the love in with clegg and cameron head , Russell for me is ace but he draped poor dt in misery for ages so it be nice to have a break from his hamlet writing
he had ace stories and monsters and had child like and adult like enthusim for the show , I got his book from the library and its hilraous , he is a good writer etc but made me cry too much and Moffatt has more humour in his writing for me now , I am not saying russell wasnt funny , he was but he was too sad in writing in the end , I love series 1 and 2 for fresh rawity and Moffatt did write sad stories but it wasnt as sad as Davies axI borrowed the book from the library

It has nothing to do with being a control freak. A chief writer is responsible for a quality and a direction of the show. If he thinks that either of them suffer he must intervene. One could argue if this or that intervention was necessary, but overall RTD did pretty well IMO. We'll have to wait a bit more to have something more definite about SM.

At least both SM and RTD seem to have the same level of care and continuity like Darlton from "Lost" unlike say, Tim Kring from "Heroes" who never seemed to know quite what he wanted from show to show or year to year.

That comment was in fact aimed at your persistent attempts to write off the non televised material as 'not canon' when this has never been stated by the BBC or anyone else in a position to give an official judgment. As I said: your opinion, nothing more.

Or Brannon Braga, who deliberately had episodes of Star Trek: Voyager contradict each other because he had a personal dislike of continuity.

Persistent I think I may have mentioned this about 2 or 3 times out of my entire posting history. If I am persistently mentioning this it should be no bother to find a few recent threads where I have repeated it, because I'm pretty sure I have not and do not persistently post saying I think audio books and books are not canon.





I take it you were unable to point me towards your legitimate criticism within this thread.

In Braga's case, I suspect he was doing it deliberately to annoy the section of the Trek fanbase for whom continuity is sacrosanct.

Was probably out of revenge for the online abuse him and Berman were routinely at the receiving end of...

Regards,

Cypher

Really? wow, I never realised he had done that. Perhaps because I haven't seen every last episode (only about 95%) There might be some continuity wrecking ones I missed - lol!

I know this is a thread about DW but am interested what Braga did?

So in order to also keep it on topic. Yup read the writers Tale... interesting. Sa the rewrite and the fact he didn't rewrite Moff much. I suppose it just depends how well that writer that is hired is able to provide a solid finished product at the end of the day.

I recommend 'Delta Quadrant: the Unofficial Guide to Voyager' by David A McIntee, which goes into this in quite a bit of detail (even going so far as to keep a running count of how many shuttlecraft were destroyed during the course of the series-it's a considerably higher number than Voyager was equipped with in the beginning!).

Thanks for the replies, this was an interesting thread. (Well, page one, anyway.)

Seems I was totally wrong about RTD having little involvement in others’ scripts. Perhaps this year’s episodes just seem more uniform to me because SM has a stronger, more distinctive style — whereas RTD was comparatively much less stylised?

I just have one question: does anyone know if Mark Gatiss’s script for Victory Of The Daleks was left untouched by SM? I ask because this seems to stand out like a sore thumb in this series. Not that it was terrible — I enjoyed it — but it did seem to be missing that little spark of SM magic I’ve noticed in every single other episode so far.

Exciting to hear that Doc 11 will be in SJA, regardless of who’s writing it. I agree it will be interesting to see RTD write Doc 11!

Regarding re-writing scripts, I fail to see how that can be anything but good for the show. Any writer who has a problem with their script being re-written by the executive producer is being petty and unprofessional. The executive producer is in charge: they call the shots. The tone and style of the show is up to them, and it’s not the scriptwriter’s place to challenge these decisions.

A collaborative creative work would fall apart without a chain of command. Is it appropriate for the sandwich lady to kick up a strop about a line she feels is out of character? No. She is low down on the chain of command, and ultimately the head of that chain has final say above all others (even those directly beneath them). As long as they have executive producer status, they have free reign to do whatever they like with the show, and so they should.


How sad. I think Braga/Berman had a good run, especially in the early 90s while Roddenberry’s blood was still running through the veins of TNG.But by the end of Voyager I had come to really resent what they did to the franchise. (And what came after Voyager is too evil to be uttered.)


Sounds good. I’ll have a look at that. I used to adore the Nitpicker’s Guide books by Phil Farrand, listing all the mistakes in every episode.

An interesting site I would recommend is the First TV Drama website, by Richard Whettstone. He’s an aspiring sci-fi writer in the very early stages of producing his own space station series (sounds exciting from what he writes). He also reviews a lot of stuff including pulling apart episodes of Enterprise, which is all very funny (best read after watching the episodes).

Then of course there’s always good old Confused Matthew, who (in case you didn’t know) is a truly excellent and funny YouTube movie reviewer. He’s done loads of Star Trek reviews, but he covers a wide variety of films.

Star Trek, TNG fans should also not miss Wil Wheton’s Trek reviews. Hilarious because he makes fun of episodes he was in, often pointing out how bad his character was!

Any more sci-fi recommendations, I’d love to hear.

I don't know how much of Gatiss's script he changed or not....but it was a shopping list story, much like Helen Raynor used to get from RTD. In that the writer is given things to put in their script...for example in Victory it was Churchill Vs the Daleks, new Daleks, Spitfires in Space, Daleks winning.

Part of me still thinks they maybe hacked five minutes out of "Victory of the Daleks" in order to have the advert for the game afterwards. I can't logically think why the episode ran at barely 40 minutes apart from that, since extra scenes are often shot and added in later to boost such underrunning eps.

Russell also stated in the Writers Tale that he never touched Chris Chibnall scripts either but whether that only ment Torchwood or included 42, I don't know.