Doctor Who

[Thad]

AFAIK Tennant's in all four of the upcoming anniversary specials and Gatwa's taking over from there.

Though I kinda feel like going in on this "Fourteenth Doctor" numbering implies Davies might have some more appearances in mind for him. (There hasn't been any confirmation that any more spinoffs are coming, but he's said more than once that that's what he wants to do.)

Or he's just messing with anal-retentive fans like the ones who are still mad about the War Doctor and Jo Martin's Doctor throwing off the count. I can get behind that.

But I'm still going to call him the Grover Cleveland Doctor.

[Büge]

Can anyone who's actually watched the Moffat era Dr. Whos verify if the appraisal of it as being much more sexist is at all accurate?

[Thad]

Can anyone who's actually watched the Moffat era Dr. Whos verify if the appraisal of it as being much more sexist is at all accurate?

I don't have an hour to watch the video right now, but I think it's probably fair to say it's more sexist than the Davies or Chibnall eras. At least, the Matt Smith years are.

A big part of the issue is that every supporting character is defined entirely in terms of their relationship with the Doctor. Amy's been obsessed with him since she was a little girl, and River (who was fierce and independent in her first appearance, which Moffat wrote but was before he was showrunner) winds up having a pretty terrible arc where she's brainwashed from birth to assassinate him, fake-assassinates him, and then goes to prison for it, but this is treated as being perfectly okay because she can break out and go have adventures with him whenever she feels like it. It is not great!

Once Amy leaves and Clara joins the team things start getting a little less codependent, though in her initial arc she's more of a plot device than a character.

And then we're on to Capaldi, and I think things go a lot better there. Clara...kind of keeps changing to fit whatever the season arc is, which makes it hard for her to feel like a fully rounded character, but she's more independent than the past companions (she doesn't even live on the TARDIS; she goes home and back to her job between episodes). Michelle Gomez as Missy is a delight; she's kinda got the problem of being defined in terms of her relationship to the Doctor again, but...that's kinda the Master's deal, regardless of what gender they've been over the years; the Master is the Doctor's old friend and evil opposite. I remember liking Lady Me and her whole deal, and I dug the Paternoster Gang as recurring supporting cast.

Bill...was fine, I'm pretty sure, but on the whole I'd say she's the least memorable companion in modern Who.

And River's final appearance is a return to form and much more satisfying than any of her appearances opposite Smith.

I think that, looking at the run as a whole, Moffat botched his female characters those first couple seasons but probably got feedback about it and made an effort to do better later.

I'd say he had more trouble writing well-rounded female characters than the other two showrunners on the modern series, but less than the ones on classic Who.

[Thad]

I should add that, despite those criticisms, Moffat's still my favorite of the three modern showrunnners. His output was more consistent when he was just doing one show a season under Davies, and on the whole his focus was more on complicated, clever time travel stories and metatextual mythology than characterization, but I still think his era was the best of the current version of the show.

[Thad]

Okay, one more: here's us talking about it at the time.

[Friday]

Really funny to me that we're now so old that we can find ourselves talking about the topic of any given video essay that's looking back and whatever media.

I mean, it's really funny to me in concept. I will never actually go back and look at any of these discussions for fear of running into my past self's posts.

[beatbandito]

[Thad]

You know, I've had my criticisms of Davies in the past, and I'm sure I'll have my criticisms of Davies in the future.

But right now, as of this moment? I'm fucking delighted to have him back.

[Thad]

Like, here's a dude who's got a unique level of clout among the fans and the bean-counters alike, and he's using his powers for good. Taking a surefire, can't-miss, money-in-the-bank premise and planting a Pride flag right in the middle of it, and risk-averse Disney and TERFy BBC are going to let him do whatever the hell he wants because again, sure-fire, can't-miss, money-in-the-bank.

"Here's the Tenth Doctor! Here's Donna Noble! And just in case any of you forgot just how deep my Doctor Who bona fides go, here's motherfucking Beep the Meep.

"Oh, and here's Rose Noble. She's Black, she's trans, and she calls out the Doctor's gender assumptions in using male pronouns for an alien he's just met."

And Davies has always been about inclusion and representation (and Moffat and Chibnall did their part too), but the dynamic is a whole lot different in 2023 than it was in 2005. In 2005 he had creative freedom because the stakes were low; in 2023 he has creative freedom because he's proven he knows how to make his bosses a shitload of money.

Maybe that's what this "Fourteenth Doctor" business is really about. The second time really is a whole different thing than the first.

[Thad]

I enjoyed that one as classic cheap-and-cheesy Who.

And not a bad character piece. I like the touch that Donna recognizes the fake Doctor but the Doctor is fooled by the fake Donna, because he's just so lonely and open to the idea that somebody understands him even if her explanation doesn't actually make any sense. I also like the twist on the "say something only the real ____ would know" formula, where the clues are when they say something the real ____ wouldn't know. And I like that when they think they're stranded Donna talks about her family and the Doctor talks about the TARDIS.

I was pretty surprised to see Bernard Cribbins at the end, though in hindsight I shouldn't have been; obviously all that dialogue in last week's episode about how he's still alive and they're going to go see him wouldn't have been there unless they'd gotten him into the studio before he died.

[Niku]

caught up on these two last night and absolutely remembered why i loved then-new-who and why i ended up drifting away from it; it really was davies, with all his messy big emotions and "don't think about it" science and ability to do good horror and all of that blending into a unique melting pot of stuff, along with tennant and his ability to meet whatever the script was doing not just that week, but in that specific moment that could turn on a dime during the course of that week. there's a lot of bits i like from moffat's runs with smith and capaldi, but none of them sit with me the way my favorite moments from davies run do. i blame my complete falling off from very early in chibnall's run less on him (and definitely not on whittaker who i loved in the few episodes i watched) and more just how fatigued i was with moffat by the time he bowed that i didn't really want to get spun up again into a new era.

at this point i don't know if i'll follow gatwa's run after these three specials, but they're making an extremely strong case so far for at least me giving it a try (as is gatwa himself; he's one of the brightest spots in Sex Education, a show with a whole lot of good in it already) by reminding me of why i got into who with the reboot in the first place.

[Thad]

I'd still say I liked the Moffat run better than the Davies one (which I think is a majority opinion here on the forums but a minority opinion among Who fans in general) but I get it. I think Davies is the right guy for this moment, but then again I said the same thing for Chibnall during his first season and then things kinda got weird and messy.

I'm enjoying the Ten/Donna victory lap but looking forward to seeing what he does to move things forward. Every time I see a photo of Gatwa in costume I'm like "god damn, that is one stylish motherfucker." (I've seen a few episodes of Sex Education and liked it too, and liked him in it, and wouldn't you know it it turns out that yep I do still have a crush on Gillian Anderson.)

I also went to look for a teaser for the next episode the other day on YouTube and saw some video titles showing that yes, terrible people are very very upset, and I admit a certain amount of glee at that.

[Thad]

Like, there were motherfuckers going "Oh good, Davies is coming back, it's the end of Woke Who" and...I've never really gotten to see "Star Trek didn't used to be woke" play out in real-time before.

And I'm sure some of these guys weren't actually around for the (first) Davies era, or have a hazy recollection of it because they were kids or whatever, but...some of these people saying "Davies didn't used to be woke" are the exact same people who were ranting about his Gay Agenda the last time he was showrunner and celebrated his departure as "the end of SJW Who" (or "PC Who" or whatever the fuck term chuds were favoring at the time).

I think I finally understand Moffat's story beat about how people just forget what actually happened in previous episodes and replace it with whatever feels normal and comfortable to them.

[Mongrel]

Those people are lunatics. Like just legitimately batshit.

I'm currently watching that phenomenon play out in an online game (albeit not at full fandom meltdown levels, but it's not zero either) because the latest update introduces new options for the gem equipment system in the form of alternate-version "Transfigured" skill gems. These are people genuinely howling about "woke" because there's a new series of alternate versions of their fucking fireballs.

[Friday]

have you tried saying "happy holidays" to them so they will explode into chunks that then explode into smaller chunks and die

(as is gatwa himself; he's one of the brightest spots in Sex Education, a show with a whole lot of good in it already)

yeah i cannot overstate how amazing he fucking is on that show

the show is also just overall good as fuck, except the main character and his relationship because he has to stay trapped forever in the eternal "will they or won't they" relationship with his primary love interest and they accomplish this by making both characters do just the worst possible thing at all times so they won't get together, which includes dating other innocent people and hurting them because they were just dating them to make the other one jealous or whatever the fuck

i'm not saying that shit doesn't happen in real life with real kids, but it's not very fun to watch (at least for me)

(I've seen a few episodes of Sex Education and liked it too, and liked him in it, and wouldn't you know it it turns out that yep I do still have a crush on Gillian Anderson.)

yeah the same thing happened to me with Seven of Nine in Picard

even though I dislike the direction they went with her character, it turns out that I still really really really really want to have sex with Jeri Ryan but also like fulfill her emotional needs and like, make her laugh, I'm sure you know what I mean

anyway Gillian Anderson is the GOAT of women and at this point if you don't have a crush on her I just assume you are a space alien wearing a husk body and i kill you to ensure the safety of earth

[Büge]

SJW Who was the one who argued the Grinch was a victim of the system as much as anyone in Whoville

[Thad]

No, that was Sherlock. People get those confused.

[Thad]

Liars.

The first redhead was Turlough.

[Thad]

...oh, I get it.

Mel's wrong too.

[Thad]

Can anyone who's actually watched the Moffat era Dr. Whos verify if the appraisal of it as being much more sexist is at all accurate?

There's a climactic scene in the latest special that directly addresses that Amy, Clara, and Bill all died.