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Is Doctor Who Losing People's Interest? |
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#76 |
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Join Date: Nov 2015
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Never the same level of excitement for me since Moffat took over. Smith's tenure as doctor was bearable, Capaldi's less so.
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#77 |
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Join Date: Apr 2010
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I loved Listen too, as it was done so well and not spelt out like all the Impossible Girl or Rassillon reveals. It was a shame they set up Danny as being much more relevant than we thought in Listen (and what with Orson Pink later) but then let it fall back into him being just the bloke left behind and lied to every week, then killing him off.
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#78 |
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Join Date: Nov 2014
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I can't remember if this was addressed, how does Orson Pink exist if Danny died?
Wasn't it heavily implied that he was a descendant of Danny and Clara, hence why the Tardis went to where Orson was, and him having a family member who was a time travel, meaning Clara.... Maybe I'm remembering wrong.... and if he's not related to Clara then we have to think Danny knocked up some random woman before his death and never knew... I wonder if it was originally intended to have Clara be pregnant and that's why she chooses to leave travelling with the Doctor in order to raise her child safely... But that plot thread went out of the window when Jenna wanted to stay on (first for the xmas ep, then for another season) and things had to be written differently.. resulting in a plot hole in the season arc in the fact Orson doesn't make much sense when taking out the pregnancy plot... there are little things in the last episode of series 8 that seem to suggest that was the original intent (such as the beginning with Clara on the phone and the notes she has written about months and so forth) |
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#79 |
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Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Wigan
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It is an example of SM's bad writing - leaving unexplained the deliberately created Orson Pink link.
If you're going to put a gun on the wall (Orson Pink) then you'd better use it at some point in the story (explain the link, in this case). Chekhov's "rule". "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." Orson Pink was never "fired". Probably as a result of later changes, as PaperSkin suggests. |
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#80 |
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Join Date: Nov 2014
Posts: 1,076
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It is an example of SM's bad writing - leaving unexplained the deliberately created Orson Pink link.
If you're going to put a gun on the wall (Orson Pink) then you'd better use it at some point in the story (explain the link, in this case). Chekhov's "rule". "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." Orson Pink was never "fired". Probably as a result of later changes, as PaperSkin suggests. |
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#81 |
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 12,601
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I can't remember if this was addressed, how does Orson Pink exist if Danny died?
Wasn't it heavily implied that he was a descendant of Danny and Clara, hence why the Tardis went to where Orson was, and him having a family member who was a time travel, meaning Clara.... Maybe I'm remembering wrong.... and if he's not related to Clara then we have to think Danny knocked up some random woman before his death and never knew... Another explanation of course is that Time has been rewritten and despite us seeing him and the Doctor/Clara remembering him Orson Pink does not now exist. |
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#82 |
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: Essex
Posts: 8,404
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The whole Danny Pink thing was a mess.
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#83 |
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Posts: 15,066
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I thought we had all agreed never to mention that name again?
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#84 |
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: London or Valencia
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When it comes to writing in the Doctor's history, like so much about the show I think it all comes down to balance. Quite rightly nobody wants Moffat to curate the show and preserve it as it was when he found it... every showrunner, writer, actor, director and producer should be encouraged to leave their mark on the show. And sometimes that means retooling or reinterpreting what's come before. But you must do it with tact, and with respect for the longevity of the show.
Scenes like the one at the end of Listen can work very well. But they're undermined when such scenes turn up with frequency. It was only a handful of episodes earlier we'd seen Clara going in and out of the Doctor's timeline, and so doing so again and drawing even more attention to it, meddling with the past so often...it begins to lose its dramatic impact. Whilst RTD and Moffat have both been guilty of this sort of thing (I liked how RTD interpreted regeneration with the Tenth Doctor, but he took it too far and gave Matt Smith an unfairly tough job at succeeding Tennant - worked for me as I was just waiting for Tennant to go by this point, but still) I do think that Moffat has a poorer grasp of that balance, and it's come through in his writing many times now. Hell Bent should have been the big Gallifrey story that viewers had waited a decade for. Even as someone who wasn't keen on going back to Gallifrey or indeed bringing it back at all, Series 9 had struck every chord right for me in that regard... the Doctor had worked tirelessly to get there, he'd even lost a companion and paid a massive price for his prize. The eventual reveal was one of the utterly best moments of the show for me, and Capaldi just shone. And then Hell Bent drops the ball in a way no episode has before - it wasn't even awful in terms of quality. The good acting was there, the effects were decent, it even managed to bring in an assemblage of decent characters that on paper sound like a hell of a story in combination. But the balance wasn't there... it tried to work Clara into everything (I love Clara, but I also loved that her story was done by this point... she was the companion lost to Gallifrey's return. Not the companion who finds Arya Stark and flies around an American diner as an immortal) and it didn't have the guts to commit to the one side of things. Moffat had really earned the moment to put his mark on the show at that point, to tell that big Gallifrey return story... but he looked backwards rather than forwards for his inspiration and in the process I think he - to a degree - botched the whole moment. It ended up being a story revolving around Clara, and it just happened to be set on Gallifrey... nowhere should we have had a story that 'just happened' to be set there, and ultimately it was a disservice to both Clara and to the Gallifrey story. It was a bit of an irony... Moffat had somewhat divisively left his mark on the show previously, in ways that seemed utterly blasé a lot of the time. Here was a story that had earned its right to say something massive about the wider history of the show that could have been utterly definitive of his era, and it ended up being a small-scale story about the fate of one of his dead characters. It's an utter contrast from stories like Kill the Moon which seem largely standalone in nature and then feature this reveal that the moon is in fact an egg and will be gone in just over thirty years from now. I imagine it's hard to strike a balance, but it's necessary. Neither RTD or Moffat managed to flawlessly strike it all of the time, but if you wish the show to remain memorable and interesting you need to earn those big moments... like the Series 4 finale earned the right to throw everyone in (because RTD had worked hard to flesh out likeable, memorable characters who didn't need whole scenes to re-establish upon their return) the Series 9 finale had earned the right to bring back Gallifrey and tell a Timelord story. For the sake of balancing criticism a little I would say that both dropped the ball - both finales were weaker than the penultimate episode that had built them up. But whilst I feel Journey's End collapsed under its own weight by bringing back characters and not quite knowing what to do with them, Hell Bent led up to a moment and then chose to take a huge twist in the narrative that didn't pay off. Moffat's scripting choices stand out more as those that are a little frustrating, because they don't have that crucial balance more frequently... whether or not that's because he's been at the job longer I have no idea. |
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#85 |
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Join Date: May 2012
Location: Scattered
Posts: 7,444
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I think it's lost some people's interest and while it definitely needs a total revamp, it isn't on the verge of cancellation or anything but it does need new life breathed into it though. Having a new showrunner, Doctor, companion etc and far better promotion should help that to an extent.
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#86 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 2,295
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When it comes to writing in the Doctor's history, like so much about the show I think it all comes down to balance. Quite rightly nobody wants Moffat to curate the show and preserve it as it was when he found it... every showrunner, writer, actor, director and producer should be encouraged to leave their mark on the show. And sometimes that means retooling or reinterpreting what's come before. But you must do it with tact, and with respect for the longevity of the show.
Scenes like the one at the end of Listen can work very well. But they're undermined when such scenes turn up with frequency. It was only a handful of episodes earlier we'd seen Clara going in and out of the Doctor's timeline, and so doing so again and drawing even more attention to it, meddling with the past so often...it begins to lose its dramatic impact. Whilst RTD and Moffat have both been guilty of this sort of thing (I liked how RTD interpreted regeneration with the Tenth Doctor, but he took it too far and gave Matt Smith an unfairly tough job at succeeding Tennant - worked for me as I was just waiting for Tennant to go by this point, but still) I do think that Moffat has a poorer grasp of that balance, and it's come through in his writing many times now. Hell Bent should have been the big Gallifrey story that viewers had waited a decade for. Even as someone who wasn't keen on going back to Gallifrey or indeed bringing it back at all, Series 9 had struck every chord right for me in that regard... the Doctor had worked tirelessly to get there, he'd even lost a companion and paid a massive price for his prize. The eventual reveal was one of the utterly best moments of the show for me, and Capaldi just shone. And then Hell Bent drops the ball in a way no episode has before - it wasn't even awful in terms of quality. The good acting was there, the effects were decent, it even managed to bring in an assemblage of decent characters that on paper sound like a hell of a story in combination. But the balance wasn't there... it tried to work Clara into everything (I love Clara, but I also loved that her story was done by this point... she was the companion lost to Gallifrey's return. Not the companion who finds Arya Stark and flies around an American diner as an immortal) and it didn't have the guts to commit to the one side of things. Moffat had really earned the moment to put his mark on the show at that point, to tell that big Gallifrey return story... but he looked backwards rather than forwards for his inspiration and in the process I think he - to a degree - botched the whole moment. It ended up being a story revolving around Clara, and it just happened to be set on Gallifrey... nowhere should we have had a story that 'just happened' to be set there, and ultimately it was a disservice to both Clara and to the Gallifrey story. It was a bit of an irony... Moffat had somewhat divisively left his mark on the show previously, in ways that seemed utterly blasé a lot of the time. Here was a story that had earned its right to say something massive about the wider history of the show that could have been utterly definitive of his era, and it ended up being a small-scale story about the fate of one of his dead characters. It's an utter contrast from stories like Kill the Moon which seem largely standalone in nature and then feature this reveal that the moon is in fact an egg and will be gone in just over thirty years from now. I imagine it's hard to strike a balance, but it's necessary. Neither RTD or Moffat managed to flawlessly strike it all of the time, but if you wish the show to remain memorable and interesting you need to earn those big moments... like the Series 4 finale earned the right to throw everyone in (because RTD had worked hard to flesh out likeable, memorable characters who didn't need whole scenes to re-establish upon their return) the Series 9 finale had earned the right to bring back Gallifrey and tell a Timelord story. For the sake of balancing criticism a little I would say that both dropped the ball - both finales were weaker than the penultimate episode that had built them up. But whilst I feel Journey's End collapsed under its own weight by bringing back characters and not quite knowing what to do with them, Hell Bent led up to a moment and then chose to take a huge twist in the narrative that didn't pay off. Moffat's scripting choices stand out more as those that are a little frustrating, because they don't have that crucial balance more frequently... whether or not that's because he's been at the job longer I have no idea. |
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#87 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 5,341
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The whole Danny Pink thing was a mess.
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#88 |
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 12,332
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The last season didn't engage me - and my first story was Horror of Fang Rock back in 1977
It needs change - it doesn't need Moffat at the controls We're slipping into JNT territory here |
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#89 |
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: London or Valencia
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Tbh I think The Ninth Doctor's regeneration is a perfect example of what regeneration is, its supposed to be an exciting time The Doctor can become anything you want him to be, he can cheat death, it should be emotional but no so much that it completely overshadows everything the next Doctor does, which I think the Transition from Nine to Ten did perfectly, by reminding and proving to everyone he was still The Doctor by the end of The Christmas Special, and not dwelling on the predecessor before him. Just hitting the open road and going back through time and space.
Matt Smith's regeneration was closer to the mark again, but again not as strong as Eccleston's. I feel with a few tweaks to the script they could have got that perfect without the 'reset' that happens in the Tardis. We could have even have seen the Amy hallucination in the church (where more fitting to see those you've lost I suppose?), and the reset could have happened on the clock tower before the regeneration. In the end it was a little too much again, the final scene feeling a lot more forced and un-Eleven-ish. |
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#90 |
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Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: West Midlands
Posts: 5,294
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I've definitely lost interest. I enjoyed Moffat's run to start with, I thought the stories were interesting and well-written on the whole and liked Smith as The Doctor.
However, since Capaldi took over, the show writing seems to have gotten worse and seems to have descended into a much more childish show rather than a family friendly drama. I really didn't like Clara and everything going on around her. It's a shame as I think Capaldi is a great actor and don't want his tenure to be looked upon badly but I can't see him sticking around for too much longer for the new showrunner which the show badly needs. |
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#91 |
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Join Date: Mar 2015
Location: London
Posts: 279
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I've definitely lost interest. I enjoyed Moffat's run to start with, I thought the stories were interesting and well-written on the whole and liked Smith as The Doctor.
However, since Capaldi took over, the show writing seems to have gotten worse and seems to have descended into a much more childish show rather than a family friendly drama. I really didn't like Clara and everything going on around her. It's a shame as I think Capaldi is a great actor and don't want his tenure to be looked upon badly but I can't see him sticking around for too much longer for the new showrunner which the show badly needs. ). I think it's a shame that if Capaldi goes, it will be seen in some areas as a leaving to revamp the show, rather than a great actor having a great tenure in his dream job then moving on and being missed. I wonder whether with the grumpier beginning, the writers just wanted 'Malcolm Tucker in the Tardis' because he is not like that in real life, he came across as a grumpy, unlikeable old man. The contrast with Smith was too great, IMO. He turned from someone who loved life and was a big kid but with dark, brooding undertones to just an unlikeable bloke trying to recapture his lost youth ( which I suppose you would be if you woke up looking 30 years older than you did before you went to bed!)
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#92 |
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Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 5,341
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The last season didn't engage me - and my first story was Horror of Fang Rock back in 1977
It needs change - it doesn't need Moffat at the controls We're slipping into JNT territory here Ive no idea what the first story I watched was probably Destiny of the Daleks but for some reason I had a vague memory of The Sunmakers even before I got it on VHS. |
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#93 |
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Join Date: Dec 2015
Posts: 695
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Probably the worst character in the new series.
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#94 |
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 5,173
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I think it was me...sorry. (but I did like him more than I liked Clara...)
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#95 |
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 5,173
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I agree with most of this ( I liked Clara
). I think it's a shame that if Capaldi goes, it will be seen in some areas as a leaving to revamp the show, rather than a great actor having a great tenure in his dream job then moving on and being missed. I wonder whether with the grumpier beginning, the writers just wanted 'Malcolm Tucker in the Tardis' because he is not like that in real life, he came across as a grumpy, unlikeable old man. The contrast with Smith was too great, IMO. He turned from someone who loved life and was a big kid but with dark, brooding undertones to just an unlikeable bloke trying to recapture his lost youth ( which I suppose you would be if you woke up looking 30 years older than you did before you went to bed!)
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#96 |
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Posts: 1,999
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I think dr who has only a few more years before it will again be mothballed. It has already had 10 years since the re-launch, more than many similar shows, but I don't think it is cutting it anymore. Nothing lasts forever, and no programme has the right to. The last 5 years has seen much to undermine the show;
The cancellation of confidential Split seasons Jumping timeslots Closure of the DW experience Inability for visual effects to move with the times Ultimately, imho, the last few years have seen some godawful writing, with poor stories and weak characters. I agree that the casual viewers have lost interest, whilst others have simply grown out of it. |
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#97 |
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 1,327
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I think dr who has only a few more years before it will again be mothballed. It has already had 10 years since the re-launch, more than many similar shows, but I don't think it is cutting it anymore. Nothing lasts forever, and no programme has the right to. The last 5 years has seen much to undermine the show;
The cancellation of confidential Split seasons Jumping timeslots Closure of the DW experience Inability for visual effects to move with the times Ultimately, imho, the last few years have seen some godawful writing, with poor stories and weak characters. I agree that the casual viewers have lost interest, whilst others have simply grown out of it. |
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#98 |
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Join Date: Sep 2014
Posts: 2,295
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While I agree with at least three of your reasons, I am concerned that we, the fans, are talking down dr who, when we should be constructive and boosting it, spreading the word ? Who will defend the doctor if not us ?!
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#99 |
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Join Date: Mar 2015
Location: London
Posts: 279
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Apart from needing someone to contrast with Matt, what was hinted at and much discussed at the time was that thinking logically, after spending hundreds of years stuck on Trenzalore fighting, ageing and expecting to die at any stage, when he finally turned into 12 and in such a violent fashion he had every right to feel shell shocked and be a bit grumpy and moody
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#100 |
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Posts: 5,173
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Which is perfectly reasonable as a storyline but a terrible way to introduce a new actor. They should have lightened him up much more quickly. And why the midlife crisis?
Two of the things totally within the control of the BBC that I agree havn't helped are the split seasons and lack of a stable start time, jumping about with a different time each week seemingly to accommodate other programmes always strikes me as a strange way to treat one of your 'flagship' shows. |
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). I think it's a shame that if Capaldi goes, it will be seen in some areas as a leaving to revamp the show, rather than a great actor having a great tenure in his dream job then moving on and being missed. I wonder whether with the grumpier beginning, the writers just wanted 'Malcolm Tucker in the Tardis' because he is not like that in real life, he came across as a grumpy, unlikeable old man. The contrast with Smith was too great, IMO. He turned from someone who loved life and was a big kid but with dark, brooding undertones to just an unlikeable bloke trying to recapture his lost youth ( which I suppose you would be if you woke up looking 30 years older than you did before you went to bed!)