I think Doctor Who has the greatest concept for a television program ever created. One that has immense scope, the whole of time and space. However I feel the show often doesn't utilize the sandbox the concept promotes.

The entire universe and most of the episodes are set on earth, and when they do leave earth they go somewhere that's populated by mostly humans or only humans.

In series 8 we had only one episode set on another planet, time heist. We had the dalek episode that was set half on a space station (with humans) half on earth, a episode on earths moon and another episode on a space train (filled with humans). Then the rest of the episodes in the series were on earth, though granted some would show fleeting glimpses of other planets.

It's like having a magic ticket that could take you anywhere in the world and using it to go down the street.

It makes the universe seem small, especially when we run into the same alien species half the time.

I can understand it must be difficult to create alien worlds on the budget the show has, but it is possible and it is possible to set stories on alien worlds that don't break the bank like The Girl Who Waited. I thought the alien environment in rings of akhaten was done well, and would like to see more episodes that put us in settings like that.

In general I feel the show doesn't have enough ambition or doesn't take enough risks in setting stories on alien planets and showing truly alien environments for the doctor and companions to visit.

Perhaps though people disagree and they prefer to have most episodes on earth, and wish to see those type of adventures, maybe because they find it more relatable, and like the current set up of the characters visiting alien worlds off screen and only seeing glimpses of it.

Appreciate your thoughts...

You could argue that the in show reason was The Doctor had just spent between 900 and 1000 years on Trenzalore so maybe wanted to spend more time on Earth as he had not been back for so long.

Short answer: budget reasons

True you could say that for series 8

Still crossing my fingers that maybe we'll see the surface of Sontar one day.

At a earlier stage in the sontaran evolution would be good, which would live up to the all of time aspect of the show, we tend to always see a alien race in a similar state, i.e. sontarans as clone warrior's, it would be interesting to see what they were like before they became that, maybe back then they had culture, fun and weird hairdos but when war with the rutons started it drove them to become the narrow soldier moulded beings that we are use too.

Nothing else needs to be said. They do as much as they can. If they're not doing more you can be sure the reason is always budgetary.

I seem to recall their last big alien planet story, Rings of Akhaten, drew quite lot of ire, some of which was for the crappy looking nature of it.

Planet Earth has certainly taken some battering this series.
Let somebody else be threatened with extinction just for a change.

A lot of planets have a north, sorry I mean a quarry.

I'm sure if they had an unlimited budget they'd be on a new planet every week.

This series we've had three episodes on spaceships of various kind and one on an unknown planet (Bank of Karabraxos - don't think it was named?). In series 7 we had 3 largely on non-earth planets and 3 on spaceships, including the Tardis. Of the two interim specials, we had quite a lot of off-earth action.

But yes; I think that really in a series we ought to be getting one episode which is properly 'alien', and series 8 didn't give us one of those; it seemed to be a rather 'earth-centric' series. I think if we get one big non-earth episode a series, with a 2-3 others set on foreign planets/spaceships which look rather earth-like then I'm content!

Lets go back to Vortis, if they could do it in the 60's they can surely do it now.

Bristol is fairly alien

Seriously though I would have thought they can get away from earth without it costing anymore - it doesn't have to be all flashy cgi, they can set it indoors - just on another planet, with a new race or two

I generally favour the RTD era over Moffat's era in most aspects, but I have to say that overall Moffat generally does better than RTD's era in the aspect of not giving us too many modern day earth stories overall in his era.

I do agree however that in series 8 he took a bit of a backstep on that front and made us feel rather tethered to modern day earth as we had to see it most episodes either to pick clara up or too fit in some danny and Clara scenes. Basically the whole cause of the problem, as with many other problems in series 8 rests squarely with Danny and Clara and now Danny is gone and Clara hopefully will be by the end of the christmas episode then we can move on and have the doctor in freefall through time and space again, especially if we hopefully get a permanent traveller companion once again.

They really should try to make stories more alien. As it stands, the current series is more like flaming Eastenders!

I quite liked the scene in Classic Who "Trial of a Timelord", where the Tardis lands in the sea, with a giant planet in the background and pink sea, green sky. All done, no doubt, with Colour Separation Overlay.

And I want properly done alien special effects, like when Clara and the Doctor were injected into the dalek's eye-stalk. Not Mickey Mouse cop-outs, such as planet-wide forests being incinerated in the blink of an eye. Nor Clangers Soup Dragons laying Moon eggs!

I agree with what you say and for those stating budgetary reasons, well no, If anything it's a lack of imagination and too many writers. Never mind Series 8 being Earth centric, it was too Coal Hill centric for my liking. Star Trek had a bright idea of M class or something planets, that is inhabitable to humans, always looked like Earth though.

In my count of episodes set either on Earth, an Alien Planet or a Spaceship, series 7 won the "least on Planet Earth" prize with 7 (+4 Alien Planets + 2 Spaceships), However the surprise for me was that series 4 was second with 8 - with 5 set on Alien Planets (helped by Moffats "Silence in the Library" double parter). All the other series had 9 or 10 episodes based on Earth.



AFAICS, there have been 2 episodes in the entirety of New-Who that have visited alien planets where other alien life was featured significantly, one was "Rings", the other was "Planet of the Ood", and even the latter was mainly about the humans. It's a pretty poor record !

Most science fiction, and all of mainstream science-fiction is 'about the humans'. There's no other level we can relate to other than the purely speculative (pure Sci-Fi). The big strength generally of science fiction is that it is able to comment on our contemporary human world and human society from a position of distance, whether that be an imagined future or alien world or a fictionalized past. Doctor Who does have a very good track record of this - better than you'd expect of a mainstream television show.

Doctor who is actually drama, not speculative fiction, and drama can only be about humans, even if that be through personified alien creatures or animals.

The time aspect of it only has relevance on Earth anyway as the history of an alien planet is meaningless to us. So to all intents and purposes the past and future Earth stories are 'alien planets' anyway. I would rather have a majority of good stories set on Earth than trying to recreate alien environments and creatures just for the sake of it. If the same story can be played out in a broken fridge in Bognor, why go to all the effort of setting it on the planet of (insert alien name, probably with an X in it) and having to spend half of the precious 45mins explaining the difference between their culture and ours?

There's not really any practical difference between planets and space stations to most intents and purposes. I mean, if the bank of Karabraxos was on a space station instead of a planet, would it really make a difference? If the rebuilt Orient Express was travelling across a hostile planet a la Midnight, it wouldn't change the story significantly.

Another way of creating a "position of distance" is to depict an alien people that reflects on humanity - the Daleks are the prime example, but so was Peladon in the classic series- one Pertwee story was an allegory on the UK miners strikes of the early 1970's

In new-who, "The Planet of the Ood" allows us to comment on human behaviour by showing us an alien society (or at least the dregs of it)
Last edited by prof_travers : 14-11-2014 at 10:15

Argeed - and you could argue the same about stories set on Earth - Dalek could have been set on a spaceship with very little alteration (it is slightly neater set on Earth, because the threat of the Dalek getting into the outside world is more immediate) , The Rebel Flesh could have been set on an alien planet.

I had actually forgotten that it wasn't!

Indeed It's not really relevant to the story. And so, if one buys Tom Tit's argument that commenting on current humanity requires the action to take place in human societies, then the OP's request for more travel in space will only result in more places like "New Earth", "The Impossible Planet", "Midnight", "Trenzalore" and wherever "A Christmas Carol" was set.

Whilst "Rings of Akhaten" wasn't terribly successful (my own view is that it pulled the "No thats not the real monster, this is" trick too many times in 45 min, and I have a general, if mild, dislike for planet-sized "monsters") there were some ideas in there worth exploring that are intrinsically alien. The idea of trading things by value could have been explored. One could have built an episode around that, if by trading the leaf, Clara's love for her parents (the reason why the leaf had value for her) was somehow inhibited - thus making the practice of trading value sinister.

Amy Farrah Fowler: "For someone who has a machine that can travel anywhere in time and space, Doctor Who sure does have a thing for modern-day London."

I like this quote from The Big Bang Theory!