Hmmm - I just love the speculation, but this all seems very reasonable now... although we have drifted off-topic a bit. Sorry to the OP!!

Methinks it is a show largely aimed at children; read RTDs speech in the leaflet that comes with the box set.

It was confirmed way back that it was although now that the spin-off series is announced I've an inkling it might change.

It accounts for the Slitheen.

Seems likely as
Remember also that it's the repeated meme aspect of it that we're looking for. It may or may not be a single phrase...

My money is on

I procastinated over Bad Wolf last year and what my theory was so this year I am most probably going to hang myself out to dry!

Don't get me wrong - obviously it's made bearing in mind there will be a lot of children watching. I'm thrilled that kids today are marvelling at the show that enthralled me every week. I'm not one of those fans who want it all for themselves and insist it's an adult-only drama.

I do however think that it has always had something for adults as well - maybe not so much in the very early days, but as it progressed - certainly by the 70s.

All I meant was that in DW there is something for everyone - and if it's done in the right way, some more grown-up"ideas" and "themes" have their place.

Kids these days hear far worse in the playground so if grown up ideas or themes are presented to them in a sensible and intelligent way then perhaps it will encourage them to challenge their own perceptions and attitudes that they come across. We are living in a 'nanny state' as it is so don't think television or any other medium should shy away from real life..after all we can't sanitise what really is going on.

RTD and the BBC said lots of things last year.

One minute it was written for children, the next minute it's written for a family audience, the next minute it's too scary, the next minute it's got to compete with 'Buffy', the next minute it's back to being for children again.

There was so much bullshit last year that came from PR spokespeople, or quotes from magazine articles.

So much bullshit in fact that they created a bit of a mess for themselves and ended up wrongfully quoting Chris Eccleston and creating an unpleasant situation for Chris from their mistake.

Absolutely - difficult to tell what's spin and what isn't.

I agree with what you said in your above post.
I like it so it has appeal to a wider age range.
Kids nowadays are into much more mature drama than they used to be.
And because of this I always felt that the last series of 'Doctor Who' seemed to be aimed at a much lower age group than I would have liked.
Still enjoyable, but on the other hand a bit too soft, cautious, nannying, and silly slapstick....in parts. At times this was noticeable when scenes that were meatier were edited eitherside of the more 'kiddish' bits.

I do think that the next series can afford to have a bit more bite than the last one. I'm sure the kids can handle it.

The more you try and keep things secret, the more people will speculate, pry and poke around for info. Perhaps that is why they are being so silent and not offering any comment at all regarding the future of Ms Piper, unlike what they did with CE.

Lets hope they don't all go Star Trek on us! :yawn:

I think it's a show for kids; it's worth noting buffy was also viewed as a show for kids by the bbc- some of the heavily cut 6pm versions even had the green blob CBBC ident thing over the end credits. I like the fact it's fun and they didn't try to make it grim and gritty and adult. That would have been boring.

Then again it is hard to know what's aimed at children and what is not.

When the first series was being written and produced it was an unknown quantity - would it be a hit or a flop.

Now its a major sucess and my concern is that people will jump on the bandwaggon and attempt to hijack the show to get their message out.

Dr Who has always had moral messages. It really is nothing new.

For instance, the Daleks represent ethnic cleansing and the Cybermen mindless conformity. A ‘war is bad’ theme is hardly new, let’s face it, but in today’s world it just seems more relevant.

I think RTD is doing a smashing job and knows, full well, that simple, superficial stories simply don’t cut it in today’s more complex, demanding society.

Don’t believe me? Then get out the X-Men movie and then watch the Fantastic Four film and tell me which is better. There’s a reason the X-Men film was such a huge hit (in terms of ticket sales and critical acclaim) compared to the FF.

And as for the Vicar of Dibley – the programme ALWAYS had moral messages, right from episode one. It’s a show about a vicar, for goodness sake! And how exactly did it bomb towards the end? Its viewing figures were as good as ever and recently the British public voted it the second best comedy show of all time.

....TELETEXT last week, page 132(on normal television - for some reason the page isnt there when you visit it on digital text)

I see the writing on DW as follows;
- they have to have a storyline that an 8-10 year old child can follow. They musn't show anything that is inappropriate for that age rnge.
- beyond that, they can layer absolutely anything on top for teens and adults. Thats why the meme idea worked so well last year.
- it also gives the writers a large mount of scope in terms of the type of story they can write. Last year the Slithereen were not popular on these boards - I bet they were very popular in infant school playgrounds. The story can swing through the age groups throughout a series.
- damn right it should be dark and scary! Why do you remember DW from your childhood? Why is it admired? 'Cos it scared you and made you think...I've had gleeful conversations with my 9 year old nephew about He loves it! I love it!
- I really like RTD Doctor because this depiction is psychologically true. This doctor does think about, and have opinions on, genocide, war and destruction. If you'd seen your plant and species destroyed, you'd probably have an opinion on it. So I like that. Doesn't mean you have to agree, although I do think it's the majority opinion in the UK

The problem is that when you use specific cases that echo historical ones rather than just raise the point you rewrite history for your viewers. Moral tales are fine but inflicting a personal simple rewriting of history on an uninformed public that may well believe you, isn't.

The Belgrano story isn't that Thatcher ordered an attack on a retreating warship before shooting started, its that the Royal Navy had already been attacked and didn't have the resources to defend itself from a coordinated attack by the Argentine airforce, naval air force, submarines and surface ships - it only had so many ships and Sea Harriers to deal with all these threats at once. It had too few to stop all th e attacks so the threat was that the Argentinians would get through and cause major damage to the Task force in their next attack. Given that the Argentine's were perfectly capable of sinking ships and the ships were still loaded with thousands of troops there are no good options in such a situation. You don't just hope the argentine's will suddenly become pacifists or commit political suicide by giving up the islands within the next 12 hours. Thats why the navy asked to be allowed to take out the Argentine surface ships before the Argentines could mount the attack. Which way a zigzagging task force is pointing as it positions itself for the next big batle is irrelevant - the Argentinians, as they say themselves, were preparing to attack not sailing home.

The political question is earlier - whether it was right or wrong to do nothing about the invasion when it was clear the Argentinian generals would not and could not leave the Islands. According to every major political party at the time - from the Conservastives to Labour through to the Liberals and the nationalists the answer was that you should send a task force. As soon as you decide to respond, you do end up with the neccessities of war taking over or you just sacrifice your own military. Life and death are like that.

The Blair thing is similarily oversimplified. Its not that Blair didn't say no. The problem was that Blair shared Bush's belief that something needed to be done. That wasn't odd either as every major intelligence service on the planet believed Saddam had WMD which he had hidden away after 1991. There was no doubt he had them in 1991 and no reason to believe that he had surrendered all of them. The opposition to the war wasn't very convincing either when France and Russia were motivated by the fact that Saddam owed them tens of billions of dollars for arms they had sold him. The argument still isn't clear cut as it now looks like Saddam's strategy was to get rid of the sanctions and then go back to building WMD when he had the oil revenue to produce them and some longer range missiles to put them on. Attack and you may get a mess and people will die. Don't attack and people are dying anyway and if he gets the WMD more may die as you or the Israelis then have to remove them. To anyone but a simplistic pacifist its a very real dilemna.

Basically Blair makes a judgement call himself which you can either see as right or wrong. Pretending he was just following Bush isn't making a political point its reducing politics to simplistic childish arguments and telling everyone equally or more simple thats how it was.

The odd thing is that Dr Who is perectly capable himself of making exactly the same type of decisions as Blair and Thatcher did. He intervenes. He disarms. He kills his enemies. he makes mistakes. He leaves a trail of collateral damage. He launches pre-emptive attacks with precision munitions. Rose wipes out an entire species. When the humans do the same though they are shortsighted or just unable to say no. Its one law for realistic time Lords and one for stupid apes.

The first paragraph I highlighted...I agree with completely.
It's a bit weak to just rewrite history with a very narrow, one-sided, self-indulgent viewpoint.

So I hope that doesn't happen.

Another poster mentioned that fact that this is dangerous to kids, and other posters mocked him for being ridiculous.
But in a way it could be seen as dangerous to teach children to think in a very lazy, simplistic manner about the ethics of 'right' and 'wrong'.
Because even if children are spoon-fed anti-war messages, in the long term it probably does do harm.
Because it teaches people how to think lazily, and in black and white terms. So it's not so much just the message in itself that's the problem, it's how that message is delivered, and how people get used to that delivery and accept it at face value.

Once people (chip eaters) start thinking like that, then it's going to be all too easy for our Prime Minister of the day to start a war by pointing their moralistic finger of judgement at another country and saying that because they are 'evil' it's enough justification for war.

The second paragraph I highlighted....I don't agree with at all if you're saying that 'Doctor Who' neglected the points you raised. But I don't know, maybe you were acknowledging some of the finer points raised in the previous series. In that case then you brought up an example of how well done it was at addressing your points.

"It's one law for realistic Time Lords, and one for stupid apes".

This was explored within the writing during some episodes of the last series.
The Doctor was often depicted as an arrogant snob towards humans and actually pretty racist towards them, in several of the stories in the previous series. It was apparent in several episodes that he viewed humans as stupid, chip eating apes, who just go to work, eat, watch TV and sleep, not to just put humans down and present him as superior to them,...but to also show his own failings as an individual.

And the fact that The Doctor leaves a trail of collateral damage, and causes death and destruction in his wake due to his various dalliances and interferences, with the Doctor often leaving his conscience behind, was hinted upon in the very first episode 'Rose', and later explored more fully in 'Dalek' and 'Boomtown'.

In 'Rose, that was a man in denial trying to justify his own actions but failing miserably. Almost pleading for redemption and forgiveness on one hand, but at the same time trying to validate his actions but reeking of guilt. Whatever happened to The Nestene, The Doctor appears to have had a major involvement, and his denial of responsibility was all too apparent, yet we can see he is trying to deny his involvement with guilt written all over his face.
In 'Dalek' it was written that he could be seen by some to be not too different from Daleks. He will kill to meet his own ends.
And in 'Boomtown' The Doctor was written in the show's best scene as an individual whose morality is seriously in question. The Slitheen directly compared him to a killer who kills without real regret if he has an agenda to meet. It was suggested that he didn't spend too much time regretting his own actions if people died due to his interference, and he soon conveniently forgot about 'crimes' and dusted himself off conscience free to pursue more adventures where even more people die because of him.
Even in that episode it dealt with a moral dilemna, does he send the Slitheen to it's death, or does he show mercy and compassion?

His lack of compassion for people who died as a consequence of his past misdemeanours was a pivotal moment in that episode, the angst which he was racked with in the very first episode came back to haunt him, and his guilt was evident once again. This in turn directly influenced his final actions in the very last episode 'Parting of the Ways'.

Several episodes depicted the Doctor with a shaky morality. His ruthless murder of Cassandra in episode 2 was another example. Rose was there as the moral barometer to question whether that was a bit cruel and out of order. The Doctor's answer was a chilling, merciless "Everybody has to die sometime".


So far there has been a lot in the writing that may have been missed by some.
Yes, there's been some crap,....but there has also been some excelllent writing on the character development, exploration of social and moral themes and ideas, and story structure.
Last edited by Alrightmate : 20-12-2005 at 04:15

The Doctor Dances

But the Doctor didn't murder Cassandra, did he? He just didn't help her when she was hoist with her own petard (it's arguable whether he could have helped her anyway.)

I agree about the part I highlighted though. That part of the writing really made Boom Town something special for me.

That - and Annette Badland herself, whose acting really shone imo.

Don't you think that having 'rogue Santas' and evil Christmas trees is going a bit over the top?

I actually agree with RTD on that one - in that using familiar, 'cosy' things to represent menace gives a very sinister slant to the proceedings.