Sorry, GDK - did I inadvertently voice an opinion that was different to yours?

Disappointing that, as usual, you've gone for personal criticism rather than debate.

Not everyone likes Steven Moffat's writing for Doctor Who or agrees with his interpretation of the Doctor. If you cannot handle a lively debate without resorting to personal comments about other forum users (who disagree with you) perhaps an online forum isn't the right place for you.

Not at all. Diversity is the stuff of life. I respect other's opinions when supported by evidence. I attacked your opinion for lack of supporting evidence, or for ignoring other evidence not supportive to your case, not you personally.

Disappointing that, as usual, you seek to avoid addressing or rebutting the points I've made.

You haven't rebutted anything. You've just expressed your opinion and then - as usual - resorted to a personal attack.

Oh dear. Now we (meaning you) are getting personal. If you can't defend your opinions without getting personal, then maybe public forums are not the place for you?

The past four years? Was it ever any different? In the classic series the events of one story rarely had any impact on another, various Earth invasions were just glossed over, companions would go off and marry people that they'd only just met, Nyssa's only reaction to the Master taking over the body of her father and her entire home planet being blown up was to faint, Tegans aunt Vanessa was shrunk and she barely got a mention, etc etc, but back then no one cared. Perhaps the problem is that SM sets up his stories so that people should care but ultimately don't?

That's exactly my issue - I loved Classic Who for what it was. But watching it now, there are gaping holes in some of the characters. You mention Nyssa, which is a great example. Her father was murdered, his body was possessed by the Master who then destroyed her entire home planet. And very little of that was ever dealt with, in terms of how it affected Nyssa. I think she fainted once and that was pretty much it. I'm not going to say there weren't some genuinely touching moments in classic Who but, in all, it was very much about the adventure.

But when the show came back, it was very much about characters first and foremost which (I think) resonated much more strongly with the 2005 audience. Since 2010, however, it feels much more story-driven again (like classic Who). And I think the way the Doctor was written for Matt's final story was much more about making the story work than because it was reflective of the Doctor's character.

Again, I think this is a case of missing the wider context. (And yes, I do believe that confirmation bias is a legitimate criticism, not a personal attack, and one that we're ALL guilty of).

Most emotional fallout, in any Who story, whether classic or revived, is generally dealt with within the story in question, and never brought up again unless it has an impact on a later plotline.

This really isn't a discussion about facts, johnny, but just opinion. Its about what works for a viewer personally and whether the Doctor's character in "The Time of the Doctor" rang true.

You should read some of the earlier posts on this thread - some forum members are attacking Robert_Whippy for even daring to set up this thread and start this discussion in the first place.

For me, there was very little of the Doctor I know in "The Time of the Doctor" whether that be the Doctor overall or just the 11th Doctor. It was all terribly clever, of course, and wrapped up a gazillion storylines that Moffat had left hanging - but somewhere in the midst of all that rush and panic to give the 12th Doctor a clean slate, I feel the character of the 11th Doctor was significantly compromised. Ageing him hundreds of years in a single story - particularly for the reasons set out in that story - for me rang very hollow indeed.

That's my opinion. That's the emotional response I had to that story. Its nothing to do with 'confirmation bias' or 'selective memory' - its just an opinion that some forum members don't agree with (which is fine) but that others want to dismiss by making personal criticisms of me and others who dare to disagree with them (which is not fine).

That may well be true, but it wasn't what GDK was talking about.

Definitely. He looks close to death.

It's what GDK's comments were to me.

I'll I've done is point out the inconsistencies in your arguments. No personal attack was or is intended. As I believe I've said before in earlier discussions my "attacks" are on the opinion, not the person. It's in the spirit of a friendly debate, not an exercise in trading insults.

I was frankly baffled and somewhat shocked when you accused me of making a personal attack. That is not what I'm about and I don't accept for a moment that I was.

Your post, accusing me of that, came across to me as a personal attack and shockingly out of the blue. Up to that point I was enjoying what I thought was a fairly rational, fairly friendly debate.

I will not engage in a debate with you again. Your attack on me was either heartfelt, in which case it's actually you who has a problem with others expressing or defending differing views, or it was a deliberate debating strategy of a kind I deplore.

I think there's a middle ground to be had. Trenzalore did seem to use up an unlikely amount of years. (Though it has answered the question, for me at least, of the maximum years a time lord could go, if starting from a young body and not being extensively injured, before needing to regenerate from old age. )

But on the other hand it really annoys me how little amount of time was supposed to have passed for Tennant given the way he was always quoting his age. It really means now that it stretches credibilty for him to have had lots of novel/comic/animated adventures between companions, as he supposedly only was the Doctor for, what..4 years?

No wonder his incarnation really 'didn't want to go..' He barely got a shot at it!

I said In four years he's aged 1094 years which is true...

Not claiming to KNOW what motivated Moffat but I point to his frequent use of pseudo-christian religious motifs and wonder...

Is it possible that he's actually set-up the Doctor as running parallel to the biblical Christ - effectively now having him born in the year zero AD?

If Moffat said that, then that just shows what a muppet he is. Yes he might be a Doctor Who fan, but there is no way he can state he knows more about it than anyone else.
In fact, I would bet that there are at least a dozen people on this forum alone, who know more about it than he does.

Moffat has NOT claimed any such thing and the post you replied to didn't actually say he had - it said that Moffat says he is a fan - and then the poster gives HIS OPINION of moffat.

The post wasn't very well laid out but the punctuation was there and it was correct.

This sums it up for me. I could not invest in a doctor who left his companions and swanned off for hundreds of years (and must have had dozens of other companions in the interim) and then comes back to Amy/Rory and Clara and they just pick up where they left off before. It just seemed all wrong to me.


This bothered me too - that not only would the Doctor stay put on Trenzalore for hundreds of years but also that in all that time he could not find a solution to the problem and was content to just live out his life and die an old man there. He must have been bored out of his skull most of the time.

If you're referring to my post, sorry you didn't think it was very well laid out. I will try to do better in future.

To be fair if I had to put up with Amy I think I'd bugger off for a few hundred years to

I'll let you off.

Truth - It read perfectly clearly to me - I was trying to politely suggest that snakecharmer re-read it a bit more carefully.

A dozen people on this forum alone don't necessarily have any experience in writing and producing for TV, nor have they ever worked with the Doctor Who team(s), or on any official Doctor Who material.

Being a showrunner isn't a contest of who ultimately knows the show the best. As long as he knows plenty enough about the whole show, which he clearly does.

I always wondered if the Eleventh Doctor having a lot of off-screen time was down to a concern on Moffatt's part that Matt Smith's aging might be more noticeable what with him going from 27 to 31 (or whatever it was) during his tenure.

And again in Time of the Doctor - I'm pretty sure any future multi-Doctor stories will pluck the Eleventh Doctor from Trenzalore at a time when he's appropriately aged to match Matt Smith, and I'd be surprised if this wasn't a conscious choice.

It's at least possible that the "missing years" are just there for an idea that Moffat has but doesn't want to use yet (or hasn't nailed down how to use properly yet).

Just because something doesn't appear to serve any real purpose so far doesn't mean it was just thrown in for absolutely no reason. There was a long gap between us meeting River Song and her being placed at the centre of a two-year long story - and during that gap, she was never even mentioned.

I see the extreme ageing as a device to set up the major character differences, which we have already observed, in Capaldi's doctor compared to Matt Smith's. For example he is much more a stranger to Clara in his current form than he was before. He's not so 'human', which I see as being a very good thing actually. The character had become a bit 'my pet Doctor' especially towards the end of Tennant's reign.

We need to relate to the Doctor ourselves, rather than through the Companion. That was okay in the first few seasons but the training wheels are off and we have a much less predictable ALIEN to deal with. We don't understand his motivations and we can't predict his actions so easily. I think it's a real development in the character - and possibly one that was needed to prevent the series from becoming stale.

So it's natural that his relationship with the companions will become less intense. And however long the Doctor is elsewhere, the Companion doesn't need to know the minutiae of his being away, just that he is back, and obviously the Doctor can choose to return at any point in the Companion's life.