He is clearly an unbeliever.

Why would he compare Sherlock and Doctor Who, could he have maybe used another programme to compare with, that has a lot of fans also.

Sherlock has been off the scene for a while and it was only the first episode of the series. I thought it was a nice reference to the fans who waited for Sherlock, there was an excitement of it being back on the telly.
With Doctor Who, it was important because of the anniversary and I understand how the writers like to bring in aspects of the classic Who but also of the new, people change, people are strange, so if it pleases a majority of who and disfumbles a few, who is Barney McGrew?

I have to take my hat off to you for that one lol

More silly than either. The xmas episode wasn't doing anything to satiate a few fans. it was sorting out fundamental issues with the story that anyone who has followed the show over the years knows about. You have to explain the doctor surviving his final generation and having another. Equally, at some point, all the story arcs left from the last incarnation have to be tidied up and explained. They did that pretty well, with only a few exceptions and did it quickly and logically. What lawson is essentially saying is that he doesn't understand what was going on - which tells us little about the show - but something either about his viewing habits, or his comprehension.

I would agree with you on how fans can be the worst enemy on some occasions. While I have enjoyed Matt Smith and David Tennant as The Doctor, the modern series just doesn't have the same feel as "classic" Doctor Who. In my opinion Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffatt have changed the programme a bit too much in some respects.

Have you noticed or maybe it's just me, that when you say to people that you want to watch Doctor Who, they smirk and make a joke, why do they do that?

this is a little bit off topic but since this is a thread about doctor who and sherlock i feel i have to say as an avid watcher of both I thought the revalation of the fall in sherlock was brilliant and I look and how moffat and gattis do brilliant set up's followed by brilliant pay off's to them and wonder why they dont seem to be able to do the same on the pay off side with doctor who

Can someone explain to me how Sherlock broke the Fourth Wall? I didn't notice it anywhere.

I saw the fall as Sherlock's interaction with John, John did deal with it well, the look on John's face but Sherlock was unchanging until he found that John needed his help and then to admit to John , he didn't know what to do and then Sherlock came up with the answer. Sherlock bluffs, poker face.

He's not that bad surely?
I do like Moffat generally speaking, but I admit that as a showrunner it wasn't quite the same as when he wrote individual stories before that are still seen by some as classic stories.
I find his Doctor Who arcs confusing. I can't remember all the details that are flung around, and it's been especially hard to follow now that the series is split in two.
The arcs from Amy and Rory up to Clara are a bit of a blur to me.
I don't know what was going on with the Silence, rips in the universe and all the catchy slogans which were clues. I just know that I tended to enjoy the occasional standlone episodes, such as the Vincent Van Gogh one.
I tend to really like a lot of his stories that have little to do with series arcs and all that Silence malarkey.

I know what you mean. Speaking of Sherlock which is written for adults, over the two series before the latest episode, the writing of the plot structure and setups could be weaved with a degree of complexity. But for some reason were relatively easy for the viewer to comprehend.
With Doctor Who, where he's supposed to be writing for children as well, I often find it to be more confusing than Sherlock.

So either I'm too stupid to understand Doctor Who, or his writing is much better for Sherlock.

Perhaps as Sherlock is more grounded in the real world and reality any meta-references are easier to integrate and be passable.

It may not mean that they necessarily try to appease fans, in fact at times they may do the opposite and wind them up on purpose.
But I wonder if in these days with social media and internet forums it does affect their writing in some ways.
If RTD or Moffat get a lot of stick online it may affect what they write, and I recall in a couple of episodes of Doctor Who RTD seemed to express a bit of anger at fans in the writing.
They are people after all and I doubt that they would be completely immune from the influence of feedback they get from the internet.

I would imagine that writers of classic Doctor Who didn't have this same nature of pressure on them that today's writers do from internet media.

I don't think it's an unfair article. I do get the impression sometimes that Moffat does let his inner fan run amok a little. No I'm not naming examples. Well, maybe The Wedding of River Song...

But as fans we have to consider that the show is not just always for us, it's for the casual viewer as well who may want to avoid the crap You've Been Framed rerun on ITV. I've been in some forums on Gallifrey Base where the casual viewers have been dismissed entirely and fans just want the show all and only, to themselves. Which is one of the reasons I no longer visit that site. They destroy all pleasure of being a fan in an interactive forum.

I dread to think if a writer decided to change the number of regenerations he now has from 12 to 4 because the self-centered fans would explode. Actually, that's not a bad idea...

Doctor Who is for everybody, not just for those with a 'secret password' like in the 1980s with JNT.

Mark Lawson is such a hypocrite. He is obsessed with modernity and "nowness" where the past is a dirty word and here he is moaning about the modern interpretations of two successful BBC programmes, in the which the biggest, pernicketyest, anal and ridiculous critics are the fans, or so-called fans anyway (how can you be a fan of something if you slag it off all the time?).

Does he want to be 1975 again? Or does mass appeal merely mean lowest common denominator stuff that Mrs Brown's Boys dish out?

I've never known a journo so full of his own shite.

It is a remarkably flimsy article. More the sort of thing the Guardian spews out from one its 'blogosphere' young guns who just regurgitate and cobble together a few Twitter opinions into a piece of lazy click bait. Much as I find Lawson quite irritating and inconsistent I would expect better from him considering his standing. He basically revealed that he knows little about the two shows and quite frankly I found more biting and insightful criticism of both DW and Sherlock (despite not agreeing with it) on these very forums.

Alas this is the way the Guardian is going these days especially when it comes to the so called culture section. Half baked, half arsed, half thought out ideas from writers who don't have any real grasp on the subject they are being paid actual money to write about.

But they don't care. 600 plus comment below the line is the currency they are and their advertisers are dealing in these days. Decent articles be damned. Its a numbers game.

There are examples of this on a weekly basis and its why ai seldom read that site or its paper equivalent anymore. Another that springs to mind was Mark Kermodes pathetic defense of Twilight which rather than actually putting forward a coherent argument on why anyone should re-evaluate Twilight just used it as an excuse to bash Star Wars and make derogatory comments about fans of one franchise versus another. Again. An example of someone who could do better desperately trolling and battling for clicks. Sad stuff.

The article pretty much sums up my own thoughts over the last few years regarding pandering to the obsessive fans.

Maybe if Com Con' crowds had championed character development and well constructed drama within the show above blowing smoke up the showrunner backside by mistaking catchphrases and children's jigsaw puzzles as ''classic Who'.

Maybe if the Q+A sessions had actually championed the fact that what made Doctor Who so unique is that it didn't do what every other US sci-fi show does or whatever the next 'in' show with 'Com Con' is.


Mind you, one only has to look at the appalling crap the very same audiences are championing at the cinema, Avengers and all the God awful superhero guff, but it looks pretty doesn't it, not a lot going on under the covers though.

Really? - You haven't met many journalists then!
At least Lawson can string together a cogent and well reasoned argument - you might not agree with him, but he writes well, unlike many journalists these days...

I wish he was in hiring / firing the Doctor Who Showrunner.

Why would Lawson mention something that happened in one episode four years ago?

In my view they didn't do that at all well. One sentence explanations and introducing random new characters is not good story telling or television. More likely the problem was with the script than Lawson's alleged lack of comprehension.

I'm sure going through showrunners every two episodes would work out.

Mrs Brown's Boys was the top rated show of Christmas Day so according to logic of the many posters on here who think that good ratings equal quality it is a better programme than Doctor Who.

I've never seen Mulett advocate this.

Neither did I. I've said before on here that some people apparently don't know what it means.